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Final Projects in Writing 12

7 May 2018
Hannah R, Mackenzie ‘18
Mr. Collis’ Writing 12 is the worst attended class at Brentwood. It has the lowest enrolment rate. Students never show up to class. They submit their homework a month after it was assigned. But that’s not a problem because it is exactly what Mr Collis asks for. Writing 12 is essentially a correspondence course: Mr. Collis emails his students assignments, and they email back their work. The focus of the course is not to cover any of the elements of essay writing or literary analysis presented in English 12 (students taking Writing 12 must also be in a regular English class), but to offer opportunities for budding wordsmiths to practice creative writing. Interested students audition during the Grade 11 year to be one of the ten in Writing 12, submitting samples of their creative writing to Mr Collis. As author Stephen King said, “If you don’t have the time to read, you don’t have the time or the tools to write.” To make sure we do both, one of the Writing 12 assignments is a journal. Each month in the Fall and Winter terms, students must submit their journals, containing ten writer’s choice entries, three transcribed poems by other authors, and one book review on a text that was not prescribed for any other class. Each month, we complete two to four other assignments, in addition to journaling. These range from collections of two-sentence horror stories to found poems to dialogue – it is always interesting to see what Mr Collis comes up with! In the third term, the journaling and assignments halt, allowing students to work on a larger, final project. The only mandate is that students must share their finished work with an audience (usually other Brentwood students), and it must be connected to creative writing in some way. Ava N, Allard ‘18 observes: “These projects allow the Writing 12 students to use the skills they’ve been honing all year in one final literary fireworks show”. Because there are so few rules, Final Projects can take many forms. Previous students have written musicals, integrated photography with poetry, and written short novels. Sarah L, Allard ‘18 is “excited to apply what [she has] learned this year, not only in Writing 12, but in other classes and passions as well, into [her] final project”. I look forward to seeing the works of art that will emerge from the talent and efforts of this year’s Writing 12 class! Hannah R, Mackenzie ‘18

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