Monthly Archives: October 2010

Full Speed Ahead

Posted by Jackie in all about me, cooking, family life, teaching and tagged with , ,

 

Girl Scout Thin Mint cookies

Thin Mints: most popular for a reason

 

Here’s what’s happening in my life right now:

  • getting ready for the Halloween party we’re having for seven of the girls’ friends on Sunday afternoon: we’ve got all the game/craft supplies and the goody bags are filled, but still need to decorate the inside of the house and make the pumpkin cake bars and vampire red velvet cupcakes
  • First quarter ends today, and grades are due Tuesday morning at 8 AM, which means I’ve got comments to write for all my students, 18 Lear projects to grade, 18 Lear blogs to grade, 40 pieces of grammar homework and around 28 analytical paragraphs to grade
  • Girl Scout cookies are coming in, which means I’ll be collecting money, helping sort a little over 1500 boxes of cookies Friday evening, picking up the cookies we sold, and passing them out over the next week or so
  • getting prepared for the big Girl Scout winter encampment happening in early November, which is a bit of an organizational nightmare but will be a lot of fun…..once we get there.
  • working with seniors as they revise and draft college essays for upcoming deadlines; definitely one of my favorite parts of my job, but adds to the general feeling of urgency everywhere I turn

However, I’m also happy not to have strep throat again like last year (knock on wood) and not feeling quite as overwhelmed as I did at this point last year. The girls’ costumes are all set and ready to go (Lucy changed her mind and will be Dorothy instead), cookies will be done well before Halloween begins, and while I’m definitely busy, I’m nowhere near as dragged down and slowly sinking as I was last year. Considering the September I had, I’m pretty proud of that feeling!

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Teaching Kindness

Posted by Jackie in conversations, family life and tagged with , , ,

Sadly, bullying is one of the hottest issues in the cultural sphere right now, whether it’s cyberbullying, bullying of gay and lesbian teens, or the increasing amount of mean girls in early elementary school. Reading about hundreds of children who are feeling isolated, remembering our own moments of teasing or being teased, watching children we love struggle to find their place in the world: it’s heartbreaking, and of course we want answers, solutions, attention.

But I hope we also turn the conversation to prevention and alternatives; how can we raise more children who won’t tease or bully or torment? How can we raise kinder children? How do we move beyond teaching toddlers to say “please” and “thank you,” and that our hands are not for hitting? Like many parenting issues, it only gets more complicated as our children grow older and move into worlds where we cannot protect them. Sticks and stones may break our bones, but words have such power to hurt.

I like to think I model kindness for my own children, and for those I teach, by using manners, apologizing when I think I’ve been hurtful or wrong, valuing the acts of kindness I see them performing and calling out acts I think are unkind. At a recent Brownie meeting, one little girl said, “I’m saving the spot next to me on the rug for cool kids only,” and I instantly leapt in with, “At our Brownie meetings, we’re all cool kids.” But how many instances do I not see, and how many opportunities for kindness do I miss? How do we teach kindness and self-reliance and self-protection at once, so we don’t propagate a garden full of giving trees (my least favorite children’s book)?

My friend Martha wrote a lovely blog post recently about teaching kindness, prompted by some experiences her own Lucy is going through these days. Children can be so cruel, and this is a fact of human development we will not, and perhaps should not, be able to disrupt. But when the cruelty is echoed in the adults, or not identified, or allowed to continue, we become part of the problem. I’ve blogged before about finding our values and centering our lives around them, and the different ways we try to communicate those values to our children. It’s an ongoing quest for me, trying to keep those values in mind and transmit them concretely and consistently with my kids. But I have almost no control over the adults and families my kids will interact with, and what their values might be, and whether theirs will align with ours.

So this weekend, we went shopping for the Halloween party we are having next weekend for a small group of my girls’ friends. In the party favors aisle, we found a bag of 75 pumpkin-shaped erasers and 100 spider rings, and we bought them. This year, my girls will be giving out one of each to every kid in their class, from their best friends to the kid who teases everyone and seems to have no friends. While I don’t expect them to make friends with every kid, or try to hang onto friends who aren’t acting like friends, I do want them to be kind and compassionate, and I do expect us all to take small steps toward empathy, wherever the road takes us.

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Blah Blah Writing Blah

Posted by Jackie in blogging, personal goals, writing and tagged with , ,

 

Stephen King signature.

Image via Wikipedia

 

I borrowed this post title from the wonderful Dr. Crazy, who’s on sabbatical and blogging her torturous and funny path through her current book project in posts tagged that way. Plus she likes one of my new favorite bands, Florence and the Machine!

Her posts on writing have made me laugh, sympathize, and be so glad I’m not doing that kind of academic writing anymore. I used to love the way it stretched my mind in new ways, and loved poring over new theorists I’d just discovered, but I was never thoroughly convinced that I needed to be doing this writing, that it really fulfilled me or had the potential to make an impact on the world in a meaningful way. Now of course, I’m not saying academic writing can’t do that, or even that mine couldn’t have, but I never felt like I was, and that feeling has become more and more important to me.

Then I spent about a five-year chunk writing for progressive magazines and websites, which was incredibly fulfilling and made me a better writer, but requires a level of engagement and focus on culture that I had trouble maintaining any longer after my teaching-based employment ramped up. Through those years, I was blogging, of course, which I credit with my continuing ability to write through years that were tumultuous, to say the least.

In the past year or two, my writing energy has all been directed towards poetry (intermittently), creative nonfiction, and writing about teaching, just as my blog entries have become more and more about teaching as well. I’ve got a nonfiction piece out right now that had its original genesis in a blog entry and am polishing up a personal essay that will go out shortly as well. My pace has gotten incredibly slower now that I’m working full-time, so I’m even more pleased that I have these pieces lined up and ready to launch.

So what’s all this to say? I guess reading Crazy’s posts has just brought home for me once again what I’ve come to believe more and more strongly. Writers don’t write because it’s our job, or because it’s fun, or because we have a way with words, or are just killing time. Writers write because we have to–even when it feels like torturous “blah blah blah,” even when the stuff we see on the page looks horribly amateurish or embarrassing, even when it feels like we never have time to write or to make our writing better. My friend Dawn has had rotating “writer’s quotes” on her blog for years, all to this effect, all from incredibly famous and successful writers. Stephen King said it in his essential On Writing, and there are some great quotes from E.B. White in this Maud Newton post too.

We write because we have to, because it’s part of how we see and enter the world, because as hard as it is, it lives deep inside our bones, because it comes spilling out or is always humming below the surface, because not to write is not to be who we are.

We are writers, and we write.

180 Days A Year

Posted by Jackie in conversations, education, teaching and tagged with , , ,

In a recent online discussion about the teaching profession, a blogger I respect made what I thought to be a snide comment about the easy life of teachers, and how “they only work 180 days a year, after all,” amidst concerns over teacher pay and standards.

Here’s what I spent most of a sunny fall Sunday doing:

  • Created a Powerpoint introducing the idea of the pastoral in literature, to begin my seniors’ unit on Turgenev’s Fathers and Sons, which involved fresh research on my part.
  • Created a Powerpoint on the eight techniques of characterization, for use in same unit.
  • Wrote up three documents describing the major assignments of the unit, which have percolated in my mind for a few weeks until I could shape them more carefully on paper, and uploading these documents to my website.
  • Mapped out my senior class until the beginning of December, including uploading information to my course website calendar.
  • Emailed with a colleague about best teaching practices for Beloved, which she is about to teach for the first time. I met this colleague during a workshop I attended last summer.
  • Emailed with ninth-grade students about homework, grades, and organization questions while I checked their online notebooks.
  • Graded fifteen creative pieces for my seniors.
  • Graded forty analytical paragraphs on themes of envy and revenge in the Bible for my ninth-graders.
  • Finished final drafts for three college recommendations, with three left to finish this week.

Do I spend every Sunday this way? No, but I have spent untold weekend days this way since I started this job, and untold evening hours doing similar work. My school days are chock full with parent conferences, teaching classes, faculty meetings, department meetings, student conferences, my club responsibilities, and other school obligations, so I often need to spend a full day or block of evening hours attending to important business I can’t get done during the day.

And I consider myself, in many ways, lucky to have done so. Lucky that I have a smaller teaching load and class sizes with more free periods than many of my peers, lucky that I don’t need to work a second job on the weekends, as many teachers do, lucky to have a supportive spouse who can take my kids to lunch and pick them up from a sleepover while I work. I’m lucky to have found my vocation, and lucky to be in a workplace that values me as a person and professional colleague and gives me safe working conditions, with dedicated students who have access to technology and other resources and privileges. Many of my colleagues in the teaching profession don’t have what I have, and are still doing fantastic jobs against high odds.

If we really wonder why the best and brightest don’t go into teaching, one of my many answers would have to be because most of the country doesn’t seem to understand or value what my colleagues and I do, or just how many hours and days a year we spend trying to do it better.

Making It Better, Small Stone by Small Stone

Posted by Jackie in conversations, education and tagged with , , , ,
Rainbow flag flapping in the wind with blue sk...

Image via Wikipedia

One of the many reasons I love my job is that for the past few years, I have been lucky enough to work with some pretty amazing kids as the faculty sponsor for our school’s Gay-Straight Alliance. The club members have handed out pledges, stickers and ribbons, given out bags of Skittles with Ally Week messages, planned a support event for our school’s production of  The Laramie Project and put on an assembly about our school’s gay and lesbian community.

This year, as we gear up for Ally Week, we are also in the middle of the heartbreaking stories of Tyler Clementi, Asher Brown, Meredith Rezak, Billy Lucas and so many others. But we are also seeing inspiring videos from Ellen DeGeneres and a new YouTube Channel from Dan Savage, the It Gets Better project, which he began by making a video with his own partner, Terry, telling their stories of bullying but also the happiness and acceptance they have found. There have been many other videos posted on the channel already, from celebrities and adults and people from all over. Teens have responded with their own Make It Better project, to inspire each other to take steps today in their own communities.

Ally Week begins a week from today, and my wonderful club president has put together quite a week-long slate of activities for our school, culminating in a bake sale to raise funds for The Trevor Project. I’m thrilled to support their efforts, to see how supportive our school community has been of their planning, and to contribute whatever I can, even if it’s just photocopying and pinning loops of ribbons to safety pins.

It reminds me of one of my favorite quotes on activism, from Alice Walker:

It has become a common feeling, I believe, as we have watched our heroes falling over the years, that our own small stone of activism, which might not seem to measure up to the rugged boulders of heroism we have so admired, is a paltry offering toward the building of an edifice of hope. Many who believe this choose to withhold their offerings out of shame. This is the tragedy of the world.

For we can do nothing substantial toward changing our course on the planet, a destructive one, without rousing ourselves, individual by individual, and bringing our small imperfect stones to the pile.

Here’s to contributing our small stones to the pile, no matter what they are.

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Long September

Posted by Jackie in all about me, family life and tagged with ,

 

Ruby slippers

A Halloween hint!

 

I’ve had a Counting Crows song in my head for days now, which you might know by the title of this post. It’s been indeed a long September–all the usual craziness, plus my daughter’s foot injury, the broken-down car, and then finishing with a kidney infection for me, followed by an allergic reaction to the antibiotic which has included fever, chills, fatigue and best of all, head-to-toe HIVES. I don’t know why, but I can’t help but spell them in all-caps; they have become that consuming to me after four days and counting.

So yes, a long September. But still, there’s reason to believe maybe this year will be better than the last. Even despite all these incidents and accidents, I’m feeling much stronger and more confident in my job than I did at this point last year. My second year as an advisor is not nearly the whirlwind that is was last year, and my head is still definitely above water. I’m behind on grading, but then, what English teacher isn’t? My senior elective is going well as we wrap up a successful study of Lear, and I’m really looking forward to seeing their final projects next week. My own kids are great, my family has been wonderful, my husband and I are having our second date night of the school year this Saturday, and all in all, I think we are doing just fine.

So I’m ready for October, for falling leaves, pumpkins and chrysanthemums, for talk of Halloween costumes and parties. I’m ready to start hunting down striped tights, ruby slippers and green face paint (can you guess my daughters’ costumes?), and we’ve already got some decorations up around the house. I’m ready for chilly nights and down comforters, comforting stews and more baking, like these sweet potato oatmeal muffins I’ve been eying. My suede boots, soft sweaters and corduroys are calling my name.

But most of all, I’m glad to say goodbye to September, and hello to a new season, and a fresh start.

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Survey Says: Self-Care?

Posted by Jackie in all about me and tagged with , ,
Chicago 08: Rogers Park - Home Health

After a recent bout with a health issue this week that I should have picked up on much earlier than I did, I’ve been thinking a lot about self-care.  Why is it so hard to take good care of ourselves?  Or alternately, why is it so hard for me, when it seems not to be so hard for other people?

I signed up this week for a website called Health Month, as part of my newly renewed determination to get myself into better shape (full disclosure: once I signed up, I realized the site creator was married to a friend of my husband’s, but I have the free membership and have received no preferential treatment or compensation). I have some habits that are good for me– I have never smoked and don’t drink anything alcoholic–but also have some habits that are terrible–I don’t drink enough water or get nearly enough exercise. I’ve had luck giving up unhealthy favorites–I’m two years off caffeinated drinks and have gone about a month without eating potato chips–but still don’t eat enough vegetables. I’m hoping that starting small, with support and motivation through Health Month, that I can start establishing some of the healthier habits that have eluded me for years. If I have success with these, I’m hoping to move onto larger ones. I’m tired of not being in better shape, and I’m tired of feeling guilty and upset about it.

Incidentally, this is one reason I get so frustrated by all the “obesity epidemic rhetoric,” because I have always been at a healthy weight, sometimes even underweight, but my actual health status has fluctuated wildly. I was probably at my unhealthiest and thinnest at the same time, and decoupling weight and health has been part of getting myself to think more seriously about my health, regardless of my dress size.

Do you take good care of yourself? If so, tell me your secret! If not, why do you think that is? Do you neglect yourself unconsciously, or deliberately? What would it take for you to take better care of yourself? What does taking care of yourself mean to you?