@article{Monteblanco_2022, place={Washington DC: American Sociological Association.}, title={Pick Your Path: Teaching Sociology with a Creative Writing Assignment}, url={https://trails.asanet.org/article/view/pick-your-path}, abstractNote={<p>Fostering students’ creative thinking is a frequent goal of higher education instructors. When instructors aim to develop this skill in their students’ sociological writing, it encourages instructors to create alternatives to the commonly used research paper. This assignment requires students to write a Pick Your Path (PYP) story. A PYP story, also commonly referred to as Choose your Own Adventure, uses a format in which the author writes a story from a second-person point of view. This helps the reader adopt the role of the central character and make choices that affect the plot. Different from a traditional PYP story, this exercise requires sociological critical thinking, specifically practicing the skill of using alternative points of view with attention to the ways that the social environment and macro social factors enable or constrain the character’s path. This assignment was designed to complement student reading of the book <em>Evicted</em> (Desmond 2016), however, it is adaptable to a variety of readings and course topics. The PYP assignment helps students develop a diversity of learning goals central to sociology, including but not limited to the relevance of structural factors, the intersection of biography and history, and the contextualization of personal choices within a broader social world. Additionally, students have the chance to practice their writing and creative thinking.</p>}, journal={TRAILS: Teaching Resources and Innovations Library for Sociology}, author={Monteblanco, Adelle}, year={2022}, month={Jan.} }