The ninth grade English Department incorporated students’ passions into a creative grammar project due Sept. 17-18. Students wrote credos: sets of rules that reflect their beliefs about both their lives and their hobbies. Passions included the ordinary — dance, sports, andmusic — but also the strange, such as fruit pizza and toilet paper.

“Credos helped me look deeper into what I could really learn from simple hobbies,” Lindsey Adams ‘19 said. “The project encourages us to both find and analyze our passions.”

Modelled after Robert Fulghum’s poem All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten, students wrote an introductory paragraph about their passions, then wrote ten directives or commands. The directives were rules of the hobby, such as “dream in gold” for athletics, but also had a deeper meaning that could be applied as a life lesson. Students also created a unique visual to accompany their project, then presented their credo to introduce themselves to the class.

“Credos allow me to get to know my students,” said Westwood English teacher Ms. Freeland, one of the teachers behind the project.

Though most students do not find learning grammar an engaging part of language arts, Ms. Freeland found a way to work around that with this project.

“Students have to write and learn about directives and parallel structure,” Freeland said. “But they don’t realize how much work they’re actually doing because of the creative portion of the project.”

After students presented their credos, they displayed them all over the classroom, placing their projects on the shelves, the walls, or even the ceiling. The credos are showcased for the entire year, not only adding to the decor but also giving students a chance to make the classroom their own.

The credo project not only brings out students’ individuality but also teaches usually dull material in an interesting way. While studying grammar and directives, students also learn to embrace their passions and apply them to life. Everyone all creates their own life mottos eventually, but credos let ninth graders come one step closer to realizing their dreams early on.