Creativity Welcome! (Reflection)
If you have ever read the book Hatchet by Gary Paulsen, you know that it is very popular among young readers. It tells a story of a boy who must survive in the wilderness, after a plane crash, alone and without any support of his family or friends. How did Gary Paulsen connect to his readers so well? It is as if every scene in the book was created to teach a lesson, to show a person in any situation how to be strong and confident when you are helpless and lost. Actually, this is not the case.
What Gary Paulsen thought while writing this series was not what we, as interpreters, would normally think. This text tells from the words of Paulsen himself that he had no thought process such as this. This should not discredit authors, nor should it discredit our teachers. The writers give a platform from which we can gather our ideas. The teachers create the first step, a step from which we must build a staircase to new ideas and a new level of thinking.
Many of our ideas are silenced but not by our own will. Looking back at my high-school, I can honestly say I don't remember giving my own ideas and views on a topic in my English class. Having never been stimulated to think on my own, my papers consisted of 15% original ideas and 100% author's work. (Yes, I know that doesn't add up to 100%) In the past semester, I have seen myself providing less information from sources and more information from my own thinking. I have seen some of my paragraphs contain zero citations and only my thoughts. For once in my schooling career, I was never bored while reading and revising my own essays.
The way the stories dance, the rhythm of the words, the way a book can move-when it works, the hair on the back of my neck still raises up and I get chills up and down my spine.
What Gary Paulsen thought while writing this series was not what we, as interpreters, would normally think. This text tells from the words of Paulsen himself that he had no thought process such as this. This should not discredit authors, nor should it discredit our teachers. The writers give a platform from which we can gather our ideas. The teachers create the first step, a step from which we must build a staircase to new ideas and a new level of thinking.
Many of our ideas are silenced but not by our own will. Looking back at my high-school, I can honestly say I don't remember giving my own ideas and views on a topic in my English class. Having never been stimulated to think on my own, my papers consisted of 15% original ideas and 100% author's work. (Yes, I know that doesn't add up to 100%) In the past semester, I have seen myself providing less information from sources and more information from my own thinking. I have seen some of my paragraphs contain zero citations and only my thoughts. For once in my schooling career, I was never bored while reading and revising my own essays.
The way the stories dance, the rhythm of the words, the way a book can move-when it works, the hair on the back of my neck still raises up and I get chills up and down my spine.
- Gary Paulsen
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