Last Class and Everybody's a Star

At the final exam they turn in a chapbook of their work. Making public is publishing, and now my students are both published and have a book.  A class of 25 has read their work in workshop. That makes it public and makes them published.

At the last class before the final, we have a literary reading. Everybody gets up and reads for 2-3 minutes.  That's short, I know, but this is a class of 25 students and we have only 50 minutes. 

Everyone, for a moment, finds themselves in a nonjudgmental, totally supportive atmosphere, to perform a short work--finally here, at the end of the semester. They've had all semester listening to me, and to their fellow classmates, tell them how to write.

Now they're happily on their own.