At Burke high school we offer a creative class led by Mr. Gathman, for the last two weeks or so he’s had his students work on one specific piece of writing to later submit to fine-lines publication and a few of his student have been accepted to be in the next fine-line journal. Paityn Johnson, TJ Policarpe, Valerie King, and Rebekah Gliske, and Aisha Ndiaye are all students who got accepted.

“I was actually very surprised because I hadn’t expected it to be so soon because I had gotten it two hours after I submitted it, and obviously, I wasn’t expecting it, and then I had just got done with rehearsal, and I had one of my friends read my poem, not even looking at my phone, I pull my phone out and I see the name David Martin, and I was like “oh my god” Valerie King (12) says after being asked what her reaction was when she got an email back so soon.

This isn’t the first time Mr. Gathman has had his students do this particular activity, in fact when he originally had an creative class a few years back he had his students do the same thing , and a lot of the students had the same success as the current students now. Mr. Gathman takes pride in the success in his students and actively makes it a point to always handle his students work with care and constructive feed back, for their success.

“I’ve always enjoyed writing and like as soon as I knew the class was actually going to be a class, I was so excited to take it. I was like really hopeful that I like would be published but like obviously I wasn’t like expecting it”. King said.