From the Pool to the Page: What Coaching Swimming Taught Me about Teaching Creative Writing

This professor of English and Creative Writing with nearly 30 years of experience has recently been a certified swim coach for two. Passions about these two seemingly unrelated activities, writing and swimming, inform this intersection of teaching creativity and coaching athletics. Because the author is a long-time lover of swimming, a former varsity athlete and a top nationally ranked Masters swimmer, this writing professor was not surprised at how quickly she fell in love with coaching. However, several surprises occurred with what coaching can teach about teaching Creative Writing. After decades as a professor, the author had succumbed to pedagogical cynicism, worrying that universities mislead students, granting them Creative Writing degrees and encouraging dreams of publishing despite the known challenges in artistic success. None of this professor’s former students make a living as a writer, even though a dozen have published books. Most-maybe all-were disappointed by that experience. None of this professor-coach’s swimmers have ever made the Olympics or any income at all as a swimmer, yet she never worries that she is misleading the athletes she coaches. This chapter reframes the role of the Creative Writing professor in the context of the epiphanies of a nationally certified swim coach.