Lutie creative writing students published in San Diego based magazine ‘Cholla Needles’

Students in Lutie High School’s recent creative writing class were published in and featured by the literary magazine “Cholla Needles” in Joshua Tree, California. 

The cover art of the magazine features the wall mural inside Lutie’s halls, which says, “Everybody is Somebody.” The work has graced the hallway of the school since 1992. It was directed by then Lutie Superintendent Bob Campbell and painted by former Lutie student Joe Wilson. 

“It  has been the guiding light ever since. I hope it is forever,” said Scot Young, who recently retired as Lutie Superintendent and who taught the creative writing class there. 

Each student in the class had a biography and photo included in the book, and the artwork of Lutie graduating senior Emily Linenbrink was used throughout. 

In the published work, the introduction written by young explains that Lutie students in the class called themselves the second chance breakfast club “not because we failed somehow on the first chance or were destined to serve Saturday detention...” 

Instead, the name was coined as part of the school’s policy to offer a grab-and-go breakfast for students at 9:30 a.m. each day, which coincided with the high school creative writing class. “This second chance proved to benefit the creative muse of these children, which was also fed by countless zingers and cupcakes,” Young says in the piece. 

“In education we tend to dictate what students should be thinking, teach how to color inside the lines, that the color of the sun is yellow and that all the little desks must be in a row. Too many in education at all levels believe that. I do not. They say it never ends the way you want it to but the class met most days in the conference room furnished with couches, love seats, cushy rolling chairs and a long conference table piled high with snacks.”

Young said the creative writing class began with a series of traditional assignments. “...learning figurative language and formula poems where you just need to fill in the blanks with parts of speech... then [we] dabbled in haiku, counting syllables on our fingers. These were OK but mostly boring and controlled like a worksheet handout that measures nothing,” he said. 

One day Young said that a student pointed out that for a creative writing class there sure were a lot of rules. 

“He was right. From that moment on, they set out to tell their own story by writing several poems every day. Some days we hit the walking trail looking for something not found in the classroom. Other days we wrote our poems, told our story, self-published outside with colored chalk on our driveway, on the sidewalks and on the red brick school house walls,” Young said of the class. 

People outside of the school sent poetry books and money to buy other books “along with a few boxes of Twinkies,” all of which were used for the class. 

“This year’s class ended with a junk food party and Zoom reading that was their final project. Poets from around the world attended and also read one of theirs. There were no egos, a lot of finger snapping, relief that it was over for some and a few tears, mainly from the adults. Exploring ourselves and the world of others without judgement, in this case through poetry, without ever coloring inside the lines is was education should be and can be. 

“Sometimes it does end how you want it to.”