Monthly Archives: April 2010

In Bloom

Posted by Jackie in all about me, family life

Spring is busting out all over, to be sure; Field Days and proms and the great ramp-up to final exams and graduations continue apace. But in my own neck of the woods, I’m most excited about my two little flowers, who are blooming in all their glory.

We got them a little CD player-alarm clock for their bedroom recently, and they are so in love with the thrill of waking up to their favorite music (Lady Gaga, of course), of having that little responsibility all to themselves. They turn the music on now when they are picking up their room in order to earn their allowance, and when I’m lucky, they sing along loud enough for me to eavesdrop. They know how to use the microwave to heat something up for thirty seconds, they have BFFs and email addresses and a favorite clothing store (though they are only allowed to visit it very sparingly). In short, they are turning into amazing girls, and the days of the double-digit birthday don’t seem very far away at all.

This weekend, we’ll get to see Lucy’s artwork in a show put on by the art school where she’s been taking a painting and drawing class, and we’ll get to see Sophie make her stage debut with a local kid’s theater group. We are making plans for grilling, the grandparents are arriving en masse, and Sophie’s been practicing her lines and songs for weeks. The weather should be beautiful, and it’s just the kind of day I’ve been desperately needing.

So if you could see me around town this weekend, I would be the incredibly happy and proud mother of the beautiful girls, dancing of the edge of eight years old. I’ll be bustling around, getting lunch ready and making sure I have my camera, but the odds are also pretty good that the teary shine in my eyes will be hard to blink away.

Supper Club

Posted by Jackie in all about me, cooking

Sometimes it’s an amazing concert, a morning sunrise, a snatch of sweet melodies, or a pair of tender moments; it’s a rush of affection or a peaceful lull that refreshes or enlightens you. They’re the kind of experiences that are hard to plan, but are so necessary, especially in the times when it seems hardest to slow down, to be present, to take deep breaths and release.

Tonight, it was the inaugural meeting of Supper Club: four women getting together for a revolving dinner party, semi-potluck style. My dear friend Karen came up with the idea, hosted the first meeting and made a delicious white chicken chili, and I and two others brought salad, sides and dessert. We had a wonderful salad with oranges, almonds and jicama, cheddar buttermilk drop biscuits (mine) and lovely little cappucino creme in phyllo dough cups. It seems like a great way to try new recipes, to trade time-tested favorites, and experiment with something new and maybe more adventurous than the family table often allows. More importantly, we spent a few hours talking, laughing, and enjoying each other’s company, hours without our children or our spouses. Not because we were on the sidelines of a soccer field, or chaperoning a field trip, or handing out paper doilies at a classroom party, but because we had chosen to set aside some time for friendship and company.

I’m already thinking about what I’ll cook this summer when it’s my turn to host, but more importantly, I’m so glad we got together, and so content with how I’ll be starting off my week.

122

Posted by Jackie in all about me, media mentions

That’s the current number of emails in my inbox.

This is a number that makes me a little twitchy.

These are all emails I’ve read, but either have not yet deleted, moved to a folder (I have many), or acted on. These are emails that require something of me: something I need to do, remember, keep in mind, not forget, read again, reply to or send to someone else. A date I need to put on my calendar, a phone number that needs to go in my address book, childcare I need to arrange, a birthday party I need to plan or cannot miss. Inevitably, some have been missed.

122.

I try to keep the number below 100, because clearly, once the number gets this high, I get a little antsy. The number starts to haunt me. It buzzes in my ear as I’m rushing down the hallway to a meeting or a class. It lurks on the ever-expanding list of things I Need. To. Do. It is a number that is larger every time I look at it, and it is a number that is constantly fluctuating. It is the price of working in a laptop school, or living in a digital age, of doing much of my communicating online.

122.

The little white icons of opened envelopes, adorned with blue or purple arrows, bristling with red exclamation points or ominous paperclips. One after another after another. The yellow closed envelope that pops up as I check the clock, that makes me sigh and close my eyes and maximize Outlook yet again.

122.

I am Sisyphus, pushing that boulder up the hill, knowing it will soon roll back. I am Heracles, slicing off Hydra-heads only to see more sprout in their place. I am an Argonaut, hearing the Siren call of anything but email. I am Odysseus, longing for a Circe to ensnare me on an island with no email. I have clearly been reading too much Percy Jackson.

122.

I Say Go, Go, Go

Posted by Jackie in all about me, media mentions, teaching

One of the benefits of working in an all-girls school is that you can be sitting at your desk on a lovely springtime Friday afternoon, whiling away the minutes at the end of a long week, and suddenly, you will hear four or five female voices in harmony. They will be coming closer and closer, until you realize they are singing a sweet old Beatles tune, and you will look up, and then they will walk past your door, linked arm in arm, singing together. And you will hear them singing down the hallway, until their voices drift away. Your day will feel a little lighter, and your shoulders will relax, and you can walk to your car happy that the week is over, the laughter and voices of girls unfurling around you. You are tired and weary, but now you are also happy to be exactly who you are, doing exactly what you do.

Goodbye, bye bye bye bye…….

The Cruelest Month

Posted by Jackie in all about me, family life

One of the (many) shifts for me in switching from college-level teaching to high school was the switch to a year-long calendar. Teaching the same students for an entire year has its benefits and drawbacks, but but I think also just the idea of the entire year stretching ahead of you is a different psychological experience. I’ve been rushing around everywhere lately, as usual, and people will say, Hey, how are you? How’s it going? How are things? and invariably I feel like I turn to them with a dazed look on my face and say, I feel like this school year is never going to end. I think of course, the switch from part-time to full-time status this year has certainly been a bear, but wow, that light at the end of the proverbial tunnel still seems so far away.

In other ways, though, I’m already feeling that bittersweet end-of-the-year feeling. I’m hugging seniors who are finding out where they’ll spend the next chapter of their lives, I’m watching freshman run for next year’s class offices, and I’m planning out the dates for the last essays and projects of the year. I’ve gotten asked about college recommendations already from my current juniors, and I’ve started thinking about how to say goodbye to my current advisees, who will all move on to new advisers next year. Next month my own girls turn eight, so we’re starting to make party plans, and the month after that, they will finish second grade. At their school, the third grade is a big shift: they’ll eat lunch and have recess at different times, and they’ll move upstairs, where the big kids have their classes. They will really be big kids, and it’s clearer and clearer to me all the time.

So part of me feels like the year will never end, though the end is about two months away, while the other part of me feels like the year’s end is right around the corner, even though it’s about two months away.

Sigh.

E Is For Ethics

Posted by Jackie in all about me, authors, book reviews, family life

It’s Easter time, and while many of my friends and family members are posting updates and photos of Easter services, others (like us) are enjoying the candy while staying pretty mum on the religious aspect. It’s a tough time of year to be …. well, whatever we are. Nonbelievers, freethinkers, atheists, agnostics, secular humanists: all these words could fit, none are entirely perfect, but any way you slice it, we don’t practice any form of religion.

While I feel okay navigating certain conversations with my kids (Q: what do you believe in if you don’t believe in God? A: I believe in nature and love and beauty and kindness and all kinds of other wonderful concepts), there are other wickets that are somewhat stickier. For example, the advantage of the church-going world is that when it comes to values, the ones they want to transmit to their children and live as a family are elaborated and reinforced by the church, leaders and community they have chosen to spend significant time with. Of course, as a former Catholic, I think there’s a lot to be queried about the sincerity of what is often said from the pulpit and what is being practiced by the Church itself, but still, the advantage stands.

So we’ve tried to talk to our kids about our values in many different ways, and we’ve tried to be as sincere as possible and lead by example, etc etc. But it’s also helpful to find external sources of validation, especially those that do it in friendly, accessible and authentic ways. For myself, one of the examples of this was a wonderful books of first-person essays called Parenting Beyond Belief, edited by Dale McGowan, a freethinking humanist parent who also founded the Foundation Beyond Belief, recently featured in the New York Times. McGowan feels the same lack of community I do, and has done great work to try and alleviate it. His book, Raising Freethinkers is on my wishlist for the near future. Full disclosure: I was sent Parenting Beyond Belief when it first came out as a publicity thing, and I believe I blogged about it on my old blog years ago.

Recently, while helping at the Scholastic book fair at my kids’ school, I picked up a little volume called E Is For Ethics, a neatly illustrated and clearly written series of vignettes, each about a different value; patience, sincerity, loyalty, forgiveness and more. Each story features a brother and sister who are faced with some kind of everyday dilemma–a fight between siblings, a classmate who copies–or see some kind of situation they want to know more about, like a bunch of adults in red shirts who seem to be randomly planting trees and picking up trash (and are actually practicing good citizenship). I wasn’t sure how my girls would like it, but they have absolutely taken to it whole-heartedly. The vignettes have cute illustrations, and each is followed with a series of thoughtful and appropriate questions to stimulate discussion. We have read a few before bedtime each night since I got the book, and the conversations we have had afterwards have been all I had hoped for and more.

My girls turn eight next month (!!), but I can see the book being useful for those with children a year or two younger, as well as a year or two older. If you are in the same boat we are in, or if you simply want to have more conversations with your kids about values, I can’t recommend this book highly enough.

Public Poetry Project

Posted by Jackie in poetry, teaching, writing

Happy April! Happy National Poetry Month!

I’ve decided that I will definitely do a poem-a-day challenge, but I think it may just end up being my own private challenge, alternating between prompts from the two challenges I’ve found and just collecting the poetry drafts for myself. I hope I’ll stay motivated enough, and maybe some days, I’ll even do both prompts! Either way, I hope to have at least 30 poems drafted by the end of the month.

I’ve also decided to give my students extra credit if they put on some kind of public poetry project during the month of April. I’m attaching the document here in case anyone would like to adopt it for use in their own classes, but essentially I’ve required them to choose a poem and do something public with it during the month, and I will give them 10 pts on their next major assessment if they successfully complete the requirements. I’m going to approve each poem before they do anything with it, and they also have to write a paragraph explaining their choice of poem and project.

I am very excited to see what they come up with, and I’m hoping a fair number of them take advantage, considering they will receive their third quarter grades next week, and that I very rarely give any opportunities for extra credit. I promise to show you, if they do some cool projects.