Students’ creativity and imagination

Taking Flight A collection of short stories by St Martin’s College Students

Noel Grima Some time ago, St Martin’s College set up a School of Excellence English Writing Group which grouped together those students who showed particular aptitude from Level 7 to 10.

Every week, they used to meet after school twice a week under the guidance of Laura Sciberras to further their talent. This slim but undated book is the result of their efforts – a journey, as the blurb describes it, through the wilderness of the adolescent/teenage mind, a collection of short stories and poems written by the students themselves.

The title can be interpreted in two ways: taking flight in the sense of escaping, running away; and taking flight in the sense of a plane or a bird taking off.

There is, in this collection, the workings of the minds of these young students as they experience the transition from innocence to experience (although in a limited manner).

Sara Vella, for instance, writes about a student’s first experience of Paceville. Maria Falzon writes a very perceptive piece about a girl who was ostracized at school. Jak Battiste Dougal writes about a student’s affair with gin and its inevitable consequence. Megan Balzan writes about being in hospital and semi-conscious. Krsna Mohnani imagines one’s first para- chute flight. Danielle Mercieca imagines being rescued from drowning. Michela Manduca rediscovers the joy of a smile on a girl’s face when she sees her boyfriend. Some stories rework childhood’s tales, such as Cinderella. Or Little Red Riding Hood. Or the tale of two twin Isabellas living in opposite worlds. Some students come up with multiple contributions, thus also showing a precocious versatility. It may serve classes such as this to know, as Gillian Tett recently wrote on the Financial Times, that there is a website, Wattpad, where would-be writers can send in their efforts and they are then criticized online by their peers.