The impact of WA’s budget cuts is still an obstacle that students and educators are dealing with daily. Teachers are learning how to adjust their normal schedules and curriculum to continue giving students the opportunity to take certain electives. Teachers are also dealing with larger class sizes while still maintaining the curriculum for electives to prevent them from being cut.
English electives including Journalism, Film and Literature, and Creative Writing are a few programs that were at risk of being taken away. Journalism is a full-year class, while Film and Literature and Creative Writing are half-year classes. As a result, the plan for the 2024-2025 school year was initially to keep Journalism and cut Creative Writing as well as Film and Literature. English teachers Jason Humphrey and Brian Mahoney were not going to let that happen.
Creative Writing is a writing workshop for seniors, juniors, and sophomores geared toward students who wish to pursue creative storytelling and discover their voice. In this course, students learn about various genres of creative writing including narrative essays, short stories, and poetry, while being given the freedom to write using their imagination and create pieces based on their interests and life experiences.
“I find that at least for Creative Writing, the students have this experience that’s valuable and helps them with their writing in a way that a regular English class can’t,” Humphrey said. “So to me, to lose that would be really terrible, but it’s a budget thing […] so I hope that the town will find its way back to investing in this stuff.”
Film and Literature is another elective open to upperclassmen and sophomores who want to take a deep dive into novels, short stories, and plays. Students who take this course learn how to analyze the film versions of the same works of literature and gain an understanding of what happens when transferring a story on a page to film.
“I feel like film is the new medium for storytelling, so as English teachers, [we should] make that a part of our curriculum,” Mahoney said. “Students are going to be watching films and analyzing films to give them that language and that background and that experience before they head off to college [where] all these professors are using that stuff, so I want them to have that experience before they leave here.”
The English department decided to explore some creative scheduling options and move things around to try to keep these courses. There was only one way that this would work and Mahoney and Humphrey were willing to take on the challenge.
Mahoney and Humphrey decided to share a full-year senior CP English class and switch teachers halfway through to still be able to provide class sections of Film and Literature and Creative Writing. To do this, Humphrey taught the senior CP class while Mahoney taught Film and Literature for the first semester. For the second semester, Mahoney has taken over the senior English class and Humphrey is teaching Creative Writing.
“It has definitely been an adjustment,” Senior CP English class student Carissa Schutt said. “Our class really got to know Mr. Humphrey and we were all not ready for the change.”
One of the most difficult parts for Mahoney during this transition was not getting the chance to take the time to get to know the seniors before jumping into the class content.
“Honestly I feel like I still am trying to get to know them because I didn’t want to spend so much time with the icebreakers and I don’t think [the students] did either because they know each other already,” Mahoney said. “So I feel like I am still getting to know them even though we are midway through the third quarter.”
Humphrey knew going into the year that he was going to have to adjust his plan to fit all the material he wanted to teach into the first semester before Mahoney took over, but that was not the only challenge for him.
“One of the difficulties for me is that I’ve lost them. I had a good vibe with them, I thoroughly enjoyed them, they were one of my favorite classes that I’ve ever had actually and to lose them was [unfortunate],” Humphrey said. “I am talking about the end of the year and it’s January. That’s kind of a bizarre thing for me […] so that was a negative for me to deal with that.”
Not only are the students in the senior English class being affected, but so are the students that are not getting the chance to take Creative Writing or Film and Literature. Normally, students who were not able to take it in the first semester could take it during the second semester, but only having each class run for one of the semesters significantly limits the number of spots available, but it was the better alternative than not having it at all.
“Not to say that other teachers in this building aren’t showing films, but are they teaching the language of films and composition and how that has meaning?” Mahoney said. “[When it comes to] how to navigate that world [and] that visual communication element, […] I hope the town supports our classes in the future so we can still offer [Creative Writing and Film and Literature] moving forward because I do think they are both very valuable.”
