Monthly Archives: December 2010

2010: A Recap

Posted by Jackie in all about me, blogging, personal goals and tagged with , , ,

Even though I jumped off the Reverb 10 train, I am still and always interested in reflecting on where I’ve been to see where I want to go. So I’m continuing my tradition of recap posts for the third year in a row–won’t you join me, please?

I finished 2009 by setting a lot of goals for myself in several different arenas of my life, and attacked my blogging goals by challenging myself to do NaBloPoMo, which worked out really well and helped me set some trends for the year as I moved into more teaching-focused posts like my series on what makes a great teacher. I also joined some conversations about working moms and leisure time, as well as overscheduled children. These posts all ended up in my Spotlight page, highlighting my best posts, which makes me realize perhaps another round of NaBloPoMo is in order!

In February, I was feeling a little bittersweet, talking about the Bible as literature, celebrating my catfish friend and surviving some major blizzards.  By March, I was recognizing the need for some re-centering, blogging about student blogging.This was a slow blogging time for me–I wonder if it was a NaBloPoMo hangover, or just a busy time?

April brought the cruelest month for schoolteachers trying to hang on till the end of the year. My first supper club night and some other lovely moments helped get me through it, as well as my first annual public poetry project with my students. Watch this space–I’ve got big poetry month plans this year too!

In May, I tried my first experiment with student evaluations, which I’m going to refine and try again at the end of this semester. I realized that while my teaching of poetry had grown richer, it wasn’t the right season for me as a poet. My girls turned eight and took our first trip to faeryland. Finally, just when I needed a boost, my first teaching article, on scaffolding with digital media in the English classroom, was published!

In June, I was thinking about Twitter and tinkering, as well as piles of summer reading. We took our first journey to Green Gables, and I looked through a blog, darkly.  In July, I felt ambivalent and struggled to exercise. I added up nine teaching accomplishments, updated my most popular post ever, and realized how blogging as made me a better writer.  These summer months saw me blogging pretty regularly, helping me process my year and look forward.

August, my birthday month, saw me a a little teary after a lovely surprise reader email. I spent a perfect sewing day with my sister and my own girls, and blogged a series of posts about dialectical notebooks before beginning the back-to-school countdown.

My own school uniform showed up in September–of course, it’s a uniform I choose for myself, which makes all the difference! I cheered for Teach Like A Champion, got to know my new students and stumbled a few times during my first week back.

How do we teach kindness, and how can we make it better? These are some of the thoughts on my mind as we headed into October after a hectic September. I got more than a little cranky about the old “180 days a year” teaching stereotype, reflected on my life as a writer, and still felt I was at full speed ahead into November.

In a month where my calendar felt overstuffed, I blogged about teaching by calendar, and still had time to fall in love with some great books and music. Finally, in one of my most-commented posts this year, I realized I was going gray, and no, I don’t feel any more resolved about it than I did then.

December began with me attempting a reflective challenge that I didn’t finish, though it did help me think about my writing next year, possible (and better) versions of myself, what I need to let go of, which added up to at least 11 things. I succumbed to the holidaze and read some great books, which brings us to……

today, the last day of 2010! As appropriate for a new decade, this year has definitely been one of change and growth for me. I made some real progress on my goals and am working towards some new ones–you can find me on 43 Things if you are curious, and we can cheer each other on!

Thanks for spending some of your time with me this year–I hope it has enriched your life, as much as your presence, emails and comments have enriched mine.

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Book Reviews: Christmas Edition

Posted by Jackie in authors, book reviews and tagged with , , ,
Keith Richards of the Rolling Stones in the ea...

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One of my greatest Christmas treats has always been books: fat new unread books that I then devour, one by one. This year, I got an especially good crop, all thanks to my mother–mini-reviews below! I read the first two books pre-Christmas, the second two, post-Christmas.

  • Next came Keith Richards’ Life, which is clearly the book of the holiday season and has been well-reviewed everywhere (this review by Liz Phair is wonderful), so when my mother passed her copy on to me, I was ecstatic. It’s all here: stories of rock-star decadence with a roving band of fellow felons, tales of substance abuse and appalling parenting, including bringing his seven-year-old son on tour with him to act as his “minder,” and long passages about blues and rock and guitars that show not only his knowledge, but his incredible, inexhaustible passion for music. I have to say I was also pleasantly surprised by his blunt but lyrical writing style, as well as his unabashed romantic side. Cliche alert: I couldn’t put it down.
  • Third, the newest from one of my old favorites, Stephen King’s Full Dark, No Stars, a collection of four stories/novellas, like his wonderful Different Seasons, though not quite as amazing. Sure, the first story was deliciously creepy (especially if you fear rats as much as I do), and the third was a classic King-style look at our dark side, but both echoed other King classics a little too closely for my comfort (I’m thinking of Dolores Claiborne and Thinner (Signet) in particular). The second story was not too memorable (and Neil Gaiman agrees with me), but the fourth, “A Good Marriage,” was worth the price of admission alone, in my mind. Some reviewers preferred the first, “1922,” and I can concede that the book begins and ends on the strongest notes.
  • Finally, The Widower’s Tale: A Novel, the most recent novel from one of my favorite working authors, Julia Glass. While her choices are sometimes too precious for me (three main characters in this book include Percy, Poppy and Clover Darling, names I almost couldn’t get past), I absolutely love her characters, her pacing, her diction, her syntax: all of it, as well as her ability to be thoughtful and piercing all at once. One of the major thematic threads in Widower is the nature and dangers of a modern condition you might call parenting-while-affluent, moving from Harvard to a bucolic enclave and back, spending time in an expensive and semi-twee preschool along the way. How do we protect, comfort and shelter our children, while knowing there are other, harsher yet essential ways to learn important lessons? While I’m not as affluent as most of the characters, this is still a world I’ve come to know well over the past five years or so, and Glass is both evocative and relentless when describing it.

Ahead, I still have Cleopatra: A Life waiting for me, by the amazing Stacy Schiff, author of one of my favorite biographies ever, Vera (Mrs. Vladimir Nabokov). I’m looking forward to diving into that one next.

What have you been reading?

All links provided via my Amazon associates account, though I have received no compensation for these reviews. If you click through these links to buy the books, I get a very small cut. Thanks!

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Holidaze Updates

Posted by Jackie in writing
  • I baked 24 dozen cookies, doled them out to family, friends and colleagues, and now find myself having to knock out a few dozen more before Saturday.
  • All of my Christmas shopping is done, except for a few stocking stuffers, and I have a metric ton of wrapping to do.
  • This production of Oklahoma! was just as amazing and wonderful as everyone is saying it is.  And what’s better, my girls were 100% enthralled.
  • I have gotten rid of so many bags of trash and donations in the past few days, and yet, I have still more clutter to eradicate.
  • I brought grading home from school for the holidays. Sigh.
  • Over the next few days, my sister and I are painting our extra bedroom, which will now become Lucy’s bedroom.  We’re doing a dark blue on the walls and ceiling, with a grassy effect on the floors, including glow-in-the-dark stars on the ceiling.
  • After Christmas, we’ll be buying and assembling Lucy’s new bedroom furniture, including her new bunk bed.
  • Don’t worry about Sophie, though–she’s getting her very own mice, to keep in her very own room, all to herself.

Clearly, posting will be light over the next week or so.  Happy holidaze!

Possible Jackies

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

Recently, my blogging-friend Sharon posted a great entry about possible versions of ourselves, how part of being a productive person can be imagining different, better versions of ourselves and then working towards becoming those people.

Sharon has a consistently witty blogging voice, so her possible selves include “The Sharon Who Has Become a Better Photographer and The Sharon Who Once Again Writes Poetry on a Regular Basis and The Sharon Who Gives of Her Time and Energy and Talents to Others and The Sharon Who Has a Really Cool Mostly Organic Garden Going and The Sharon Who Writes About Important and Interesting Things on Her Blog and The Sharon Who is Not an Embarrassment to Vegetarianism Because She Cooks Healthy and Delicious Meals and Has the Energy Levels and the Blog Pictures to Prove It and The Sharon Who Does Wonderful and Innovative Things in the Classroom and The Sharon Who Finishes Novel Chapters and Textbook Chapters Alike.” I can insert my name into some of those, and easily write others (and will, in a future post).

I think this is really inspiring, but also provocative; what better selves do I want to be, and how will I get there? This is also a fresh way to think about resolutions, I think, and was more inspiring than the Reverb prompt for today, to be honest.

What possible selves do you want to be in 2011, and how will you get there?

Appreciate Five Minutes

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

As much as I can understand not wanting to have children of your own, I am continually amazed at who I am because I have had children, and because I am a parent. I don’t know who I would be if I wasn’t, but I do know that wanting to be the best possible parent I can be is inextricably linked with wanting to be the best possible version of myself that I can be. The immense amount of value I place on parenting makes everything else in my life more intense, because all my roles and identities stem from that one.

I appreciate what being a parent has meant to me, and I appreciate the incredible joy I have often received from being a parent, as well as the deep anxieties and sorrows I have felt. All of it has made me better, but as also brought empathy and compassion into my life in pervasive ways. All of this can happen without having children, but for me, my children were the catalyst.

So if I imagine I will lose my memory of 2010 and have to capture the best moments, they will all revolve around my children. Splashing in the pool, reading bedtime stories, playing Beatles Rock Band, baking cookies, saying our “roses and thorns” around the dinner table, all of these and more, but especially every minute I get to spend watching them, talking to them, snuggling with them, and generally basking in their glow.

This is my Reverb 10 post for the day.

11 Things

Posted by Jackie in cooking, daily blog challenges, personal goals and tagged with , , ,
Fruits and vegetables from a farmers market. c...

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What are 11 things your life doesn’t need in 2011? How will you go about eliminating them? How will getting rid of these 11 things change your life?

I’ve missed a few prompts over the weekend, including this one and the one about body integration, so I’m going to try and meld them together here.

One of the areas of my life in which I am continually unhappy is how I take care of my body. I’ve written about my struggles with self-care and also about my issues with veggies. I’d like to say I’ve made a lot of progress since I wrote either of those posts, but that would not be entirely true. I’m not much better about taking care of myself at all, especially in the exercise arena. And while I have been eating more salads and incorporating greens into other meals more, I still don’t eat enough vegetables, and have not been very adventurous in cooking them. So part of what I’d like to lose next year is my reluctance to exercise, my resistance to starting the exercise habit, and my past record of not maintaining the exercise habit once I start it. I’d also like to lose my absentmindness when it comes to drinking enough water, and trying new vegetable recipes. I’d like to leave behind my habit of forgetting my lunch too. Those are six weights I’d like to eliminate in 2011.

I’d also like to lose some related emotional weight: the guilt I feel over not eating better, over not making as much progress on the health front as I would have liked, over not maintaining the strong resolve I keep thinking I feel about taking care of myself. I’d like to leave behind the gap between how I feel about my mind and how I feel about my body, and I’d like to replace all that guilt and disappointment with pride and a sense of accomplishment.

This is my Reverb 10 post for the day.

Wisdom

Posted by Jackie in daily blog challenges, teaching and tagged with , ,

Wisdom. What was the wisest decision you made this year, and how did it play out?

Today, all I can think about is that the most UNwise decision I’ve made lately is the one that allowed this much grading to pile up at once. And I can only really blame myself, because I’m the one who designed and assigned the work, and I control when it is due, and I have been simply not plowing through it the way I really need to do before the break starts (a week from today!!). And so I’d rather be making lists of recipes for all the Xmas cookies I’m planning to bake this weekend, but that grading is just looming over my head, and I can’t shake it until I actually do the work.

Sigh.

This is my Reverb 10 post for the day.

Party

Posted by Jackie in blogging, personal goals and tagged with
Backyard view

Not actually mine, but very similar to the view from my back door in the spring

Prompt: Party. What social gathering rocked your socks off in 2010? Describe the people, music, food, drink, clothes, shenanigans.

Yesterday’s prompt was about being “beautifully different,” which inspired a tip-of-the-iceberg kind of piece for me, the kind of piece that ends up being too personal for me to post here, that shows I clearly have more to say on this issue than I usually post here, that doesn’t really belong here as a blog post.

But today’s prompt! Today is good, because unlike Dr. Crazy, my 2010 was not a big party year. Yes, we started our supper club, which has been lovely, and which I have hosted once, and yes, I threw a Halloween party at our house for the girls and some of their buddies, and we had their 8th birthday at our pool, so we did not go entirely without festivities.

But what we did not do, and what stands out to me, is that for the first few summers in our current house, we had a number of backyard barbecues that I absolutely loved. We grilled, we ate ice cream and pound cake, we listened to music, told stories and laughed by the light of tiki torches, we met new babies and watched growing toddlers and reunited with old friends. It was wonderful, but this past summer, we had crushing heat and humidity, an extraordinary amount of mosquitoes, and depleted energy levels, so it just didn’t happen.

Next spring, I’d like to finally start realizing my backyard dreams, so we can revive our fledgling tradition.

This is my Reverb 10 post for the day.

Community

Posted by Jackie in daily blog challenges, teaching and tagged with ,

Community. Where have you discovered community, online or otherwise, in 2010? What community would you like to join, create or more deeply connect with in 2011?

For me, 2010 has been a year of transitioning, in terms of community. As I have become more and more involved, or even enmeshed, in my school community as an employee, I have become less involved in my kids’ school community as a parent volunteer.

When my girls started kindergarten, I was teaching very part-time at my current school and still adjuncting a class a semester at another school, so I didn’t feel a permanent connection to my jobs yet and didn’t exactly know where I would end up. I did know that I wanted to be involved in my kids’ school, so I jumped in with both feet: I did all the dropping off and picking up, I helped in their cafeteria once a week and with recess duty when the weather was nice. I was at every holiday party and every school movie night, field day, parade and bake sale. It was really great, actually–I got to know a lot of the other parents and families, felt I knew their teacher and new friends well, and felt welcomed into the school community. This pattern continued in first grade, even more so because I became friendly with both girls’ teachers and spent some time volunteering in the classroom, serving as an extra pair of hands when they were building structures from toothpicks and marshmallows, for example. I helped run the environmental club, and I ended the year by compiling a photo-album for Lucy’s class and continuing to feel really included in the school community. I was one of those moms, and I loved it.

Then I started working full-time last year, including becoming part of my school’s advisory program, which included working more closely with some really wonderful and inspiring co-workers and taking on new challenges at my school. It was a year of professional accomplishments, and I felt I was making huge strides in my career. Unfortunately, these strides came at the cost of maintaining my previous level of involvement in my kids’ school community. I tried to keep juggling it, but more and more, I dropped the ball.

This year, with my increased schedule, I’ve barely made it into their school, showing up for American Education week and sending in paper towels when asked, but not making it to pick-up or even drop-off, not chumming with the teachers or helping out at the movie nights. In the springtime, I’ll be able to do more, but I feel less flexible and less involved than I have since my kids started school, and right now, I’m not loving the feeling.

Of course, this is why some teachers I know teach at the same school where they send their kids, and while I’m seeing the appeal more and more, that’s a bridge I’m just not ready to cross yet. And of course, mixing my family and work life that closely would bring its own challenges…

This is my Reverb 10 post for the day.

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Make

Posted by Jackie in blogging, cooking and tagged with , , ,
Mixinsg chocolate chips into cookie batter.

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What was the last thing you made? What materials did you use? Is there something you want to make, but you need to clear some time for it?

Today I made a Chocolate-Chip Pie, which I’ve never had before, but saw recently in a diner in Virginia, didn’t order it, and have regretted it ever since. It’s in the oven now, so I’m still hoping it turned out well, without being entirely sure. One of my girls is home sick, so I took advantage of her napping to make a quick goodie.

I prefer baking to cooking, always, but haven’t made the time for either enough this fall, which happened to me last fall as well. It can be a very calming activity for me, and my girls love it when there are fresh-baked goodies in the house, but I have a terrible habit of letting it go, one that I’m trying to break.

Like Dr. Crazy, food is all I can say I make these days. I have tried and failed at knitting and crocheting, sadly, and have several half-finished embroidery projects languishing in a drawer. I pull them out, I feel guilty at how long I’ve let them linger, and then I put them away, unless I need to sew on a Brownie badge or something. This happens to me more often than I wish it did; something goes undone, I make myself feel bad about not doing it and fixate on that feeling, which keeps me from finishing whatever it was. Either I need to finish more projects, stop kicking myself for not finishing them, or some happy combination of the two.

This is my Reverb 10 post for the day.