Essay

From classroom to slave ship, students improve their writing

The environment of class encourages creative thought

Spencer Watts

I knew the class was different from the moment I entered the room.  The teachers were open and honest in their speech and teaching.  The environment encouraged free thought and provoked our heads and hearts. I realized that if I sat down and really applied myself, I could write something worthwhile.  I have a creative mind.  For the first time, teachers seemed to recognize and even value this. 

A Breakthrough

One assignment stands out.  We had to write journal entries as if we were slave passengers on a slave ship.  I remember thinking, “I don’t want to write what will be expected of me.” I delved into it, becoming an actor.  I pretended that I was a slave, one whose journal provided a release for the breathtaking emotions of crossing the Atlantic in the belly of a ship.  I knew that in actuality, conditions could be horrible, unbearable and deadly on the ship.  Utter fear was very possible; maybe even likely. 

As I wrote the account, it came easy.  I was up late, in the wee hours of the morning, in my bedroom where it is dark and isolated.  This isolation allowed me to better connect with how it might have been to be constrained on a slave ship.  Once I “became” the character I didn’t need to create a story, only to remember, and to express those things that pained me.  “Aboard the vessel, humanity was as scarce and poor as the ventilation.” “August 15- I have gone to bunk famished and confused, dizzy and emotionally small on this night.  I have drifted into a deep sleep.  Creeping over my scaly lips is a dancing fly.  He brings a tribe with him.  One, then two, stampeding across my left eyelid, down to my neck…I explode in a gasp… a steady pattern of drips and drizzles is found landing atop my scalp.  The small stream familiarly runs down the front of my face, lingers down my neck, and is absorbed by the tattered shirt that engulfs my torso.  I will communicate that I am exceptionally frightened and appalled at how the wrath of this ship has slithered into even my unconscious state of mind.” 

A change had come

The assignment broke down a wall between what I thought I could accomplish, and what I actually could accomplish.  There were many more writing assignments in this class, and the positive feedback and grade from this assignment gave me the courage to continue to put my all into the rest of the assignments, mentally becoming the characters I was writing about. 

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