MCLA Students Mentor Drury Writers
NORTH ADAMS, Mass. — MCLA students enrolled in Zack Finch’s Creative Writing class have been serving as model/mentor writers for students in Drury High School’s Writing Workshop class with Melissa Quirk Cairns.
Finch and Cairns are hoping to inspire their students by introducing them to each other. Students enrolled in Drury High School’s Writing Workshop program are those who have struggled with writing in the past.
“Many of my students do not consider themselves ‘writers,’” Cairns said. “They think of writing as tedious and difficult and an area of failure for them. The intention of Writing Workshop is to offer them creative freedom in genre and topic and to engage them in the process of writing leading to personal ownership of their own work.”
Cairns met Finch last fall when she performed her poem that was published in the recent issue of MCLA’s The Mind’s Eye. They decided immediately that collaboration between the schools’ programs was a no-brainer and set about the details of arranging schedules and planning what such a collaboration might look like.
“We decided to jump right in,” Cairns said.
MCLA students come in pairs to the Drury classroom once or twice each week. They share samples of their writing, discuss their process, and then give the high school students a prompt to write about. The session ends with an opportunity to share and get feedback.
“The MCLA students are realizing that they have a great deal to offer the students at Drury, both in terms of teaching poetry writing, but also in a more general way, as they inspire the high school students through sharing their enthusiasm and curiosity about the world," Finch said. "They ask Drury kids to take risks in their writing and in their lives as well. Their mini-teaching demonstrations at Drury reinforce the growth they're making as writers in my class at MCLA. It's been an inspiring and empowering exchange thus far.”
The program continues through the end of this semester, with student visits to Drury on April 29, May 2 and May 5. MCLA and Drury students will then complete a survey to give feedback to Cairns and Finch on how they can best move forward with the continuation of this project next year.
