As a creative writing teacher, I’ve learned to expect surprises. Give twenty-five children the same topic, and you get twenty-five different stories. But one story last week stayed with me long after class ended.
The topic was a magical pencil. I explained how it could draw doors to new worlds or bring things to life on paper. All the students followed my prompt. But one – just one – refused to write what I had asked.
While his classmates wrote about magical pencils and glittering magic, this boy wrote something simple and honest. In his story, the magical pencil didn’t take him to a land of flowers and chocolates. It took him to a classroom where robots taught the alphabet – and there was no homework that day.
I read his story twice. Part of me wanted to remind him to stick to the topic. But another part of me was quite touched. None of the magic in the actual story felt as real, or as heartfelt, as this. He wasn’t dreaming of magic. He was dreaming of a school day without homework – something every child can understand.
That, I think, is the real lesson here. We often equate creativity with the ability to follow instructions well – to fill in the picture the teacher has already sketched out. But genuine creativity doesn’t always play by the rules. It surfaces on its own terms, carrying a child’s actual thoughts and concerns rather than the ones we’ve assigned.
This student hadn’t ignored the topic. He had told a truer story – one shaped by his own daily reality rather than an imagined one. As educators, our task isn’t always to redirect children back to the prompt. Sometimes it’s to recognize when a child has said something worth listening to, even if it wasn’t what we expected to hear.
Children will always find their own way to say what’s on their mind, whether we ask for it or not. Our role as adults – teachers and parents alike – is not to correct that instinct rather to make room for it. Let children write, speak, and imagine freely. And when they do, let us have the patience and openness to accept it, exactly as it comes.
By Reshma Gowramma Machamada
Educator.
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