Monthly Archives: February 2011

May The Best Poem Win!

Posted by Jackie in poetry, teaching and tagged with , ,
Pablo Neruda

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The trial run of my long-awaited March Madness Poetry Tournament is finally here!

I spent a good portion of this weekend, with the help of my Facebook friends, assembling a list of 32 outstanding poems that will compete against each other in head-to-head battles during each of my three freshmen English classes, beginning Tuesday and continuing as long as it takes to reach a final winner. These three final winners will battle it out in front of our entire upper school sometimes in April at one of our morning meetings.

Want to see the competitors? I’ve uploaded the booklet here, though some of the formatting seems a bit wonky. I managed to squeeze in some of my favorites (Pablo Neruda, Mary Oliver, Walt Whitman) and also some poems that are new to me. This project has been gestating for over a year, so I’m also just feeling very satisfied that I finally am getting to see it in action.

I’m so excited to see how my students respond, and to see which classes vote for which, and most of all, what poems will rise to the top. I’m hoping my students enter into the spirit of the tournament, casting aside any notions that poetry is only about the classroom exercise, the fumbling dissection that leaves most of them feeling uncomfortable and awkward in the presence of a poem. Reading poetry should sometimes just be about that gut reaction, that moment when a line or two resonates with you deep down where only the right word can reach.

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Working Parents, Cooking Dinner

Posted by Jackie in conversations, cooking, family life and tagged with , , ,
Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese, the true "par...

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For the past two years, I’ve enjoyed reading Cooking with Dexter, a feature in the New York Times Magazine about cooking with children. Pete Wells is a great writer, and clearly spent a lot of time thinking about food, family and how best to juggle them both.

However, it appears that during “Cooking with Dexter’s” tenure, it was actually Well’s wife doing most of the cooking with and for Dexter, Wells and the couple’s second son.

I have to say, rather than feeling betrayed, this honesty makes me like him even more. There were times when I would read his work and snicker (“wait till your kids are older, buddy”) and other times when I enjoyed his stories of watching “Ratatouille” together. But there were also many times when I would finish the column and sigh, knowing I rarely put as much energy into cooking for my family during the week as Wells seemed to be doing.

As most of you know, not only do I work full-time, but my husband works full-time and also has spent the past three years in law school, taking classes during the evening. This means that four nights a week, I’m the primary parent on duty for our two kids in the evenings, which includes cooking dinner almost every night of the week. Did I mention that we don’t have a dishwasher, either? And that I’m relatively picky, and one of my girls is extremely picky and sensitive to lactose?  So when Wells finally confessed and asked for advice, I was pleased to see others in the comments who use many of my tricks: breakfast-for-dinner, easy pasta meals, classic sandwiches like grilled cheese and tuna melts, crockpot recipes for pulled pork or pot roast. And yes, falling back on delivered pizza or Chinese food or eating at restaurants. It’s not that I don’t have access to recipes, because I think anyone with Internet access can tap into more recipes than at any other time in history. But the truth is, that on the days when we get home at 5:30 after faculty meetings or Brownie days or choir practice, or it’s just been one of those weeks, I’m just too tired.

Recently, I made a delicious three-cheese baked ziti. My husband made the marinara sauce from scratch while I grated pecorino and Parmesan, sliced fresh mozzerella into cubes and saved some bigger slices for the top. We boiled the pasta and tossed it all together, baked it for thirty minutes and then sat down for a nice family dinner with some fresh Italian bread and fresh-baked brownies for dessert.

Guess what day it was? Saturday.

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The Perils of Teacher Blogging

Posted by Jackie in education, teaching and tagged with
A black and white icon of a teacher in front o...

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A few people in my life have sent me links similar to this one over the past few days, wanting to know what I thought of it. Should she be applauded for sharing her working conditions with a larger audience? Did she go too far, or was she too candid? Is this a free speech issue? Is it ever okay for a teacher to publicly say “I hate your kid” (warning: video)?

As much as Natalie Munroe wants to believe that her words were only “for her friends and family,” once she put them on public blog posts that weren’t password-protected, they became available for mass consumption. Was that a mistake? I believe so, absolutely. Even before I gained full-time employment in teaching, even before I started blogging under my own name, I would never have written down the words she did, much less have posted them publicly (not that I have had her experiences, or her thoughts). As a woman with two children, like Ms. Munroe, I find it incredibly reckless to endanger her employment this way.

Also, I believe she fell into the common trap of writing on the Internet: it’s so easy to believe that your words are just winging out there, instantly lost in the incredible stream of words that are produced every minute on websites in dozens of languages. It’s easy to imagine that no one you know will ever read it, that you can be anonymous and safely shielded, that your words will never be read by anyone you don’t want to read them, much less the target of the words. Even though it’s been years now that people have lost their jobs due to blogging, everyone wants to think it won’t happen to them.

Do I think she should lose her job? I think it will be impossible for her to successfully teach in her current school district, where surely every student and parent will know who she is. But more importantly, I think she owes it to herself and her students to think clearly and carefully about whether she wants to continue teaching. I have always believed that teaching is a vocation, and should not be undertaken lightly, and that miserable teachers are no help to anyone, including themselves.

Are teachers human, with all the foibles and impaired judgment that sometimes entails? Of course.  But we hold a great responsibility to our students and our communities, and that, we should not forget.

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For my Valentine

Posted by Jackie in poetry

I have always loved Valentine’s Day, despite the fact that it’s not really a cool thing to like past a certain point in your life.

My husband and I recently celebrated our ninth anniversary, and while I didn’t do a post for it like I have before, I do want to broadcast my love for him today. Last year, he was My Catfish Friend, but this year, he’s simply my dear and loving husband.

To My Dear and Loving Husband

by Anne Bradstreet

If ever two were one, then surely we.
If ever man were loved by wife, then thee;
If ever wife was happy in a man,
Compare with me ye women if you can.
I prize thy love more than whole mines of gold,
Or all the riches that the East doth hold.
My love is such that rivers cannot quench,
Nor ought but love from thee give recompense.
Thy love is such I can no way repay;
The heavens reward thee manifold, I pray.
Then while we live, in love let’s so persever,
That when we live no more we may live ever.

Oscillating Wildly

Posted by Jackie in blogging and tagged with
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I have always been the kind of writer who hops from piece to piece, genre to genre; if my energy starts to run low with one, I jump to the next, trusting that the novelty will be invigorating. The benefit of this approach is that I sometimes do go back and find myself willing to tackle the old piece with fresh eyes, gaining a new piece in the process. However, more times than I would like, I end up with a thriving new project and a pitiful abandoned project that I actually liked, but have gone cold on, for whatever reason.

Do you see where I’m going with this? It appears that I am also that kind of blogger, though at a much slower pace. It has become increasingly difficult to motivate myself to post here, while at my book blog, I’m posting reviews, joining reading challenges, joining new memes, gaining some regular commenters, queuing up posts almost every day. I’m feeling all kinds of energy about that blog, and low energy over here.

So what does this mean? Will this blog become the abandoned one, or will I tackle it again with fresh eyes? It’s hard for me to say right now, and I suspect I need yet another conversation with myself about what role I want blogging to play in my life right now as I know it, and where my time is best spent.

So please check in with my book blog, and I’ll keep you posted about this space. As always, any suggestions or thoughts would be welcome, and your presence as my reader means more to me than you know.