Category Archives: personal goals

I’m a big believer in setting concrete goals for myself, as a teacher, writer, mother, poet and more, and in these posts, I will discuss goals made, accomplished or modified.

MOOCs, Redux

Posted by Jackie in education, personal goals, technology, writing and tagged with , ,

After making a strong start with Modern Poetry (nicknamed ModPo) last fall and feeling really enthusiastic, I ended up crashing and burning midway through the semester. However, since it was completely a falling-down on my part and not at all related to the course, I’m giving Coursera another try this summer, as well as enrolling in ModPo again for the fall. This summer I’m signed up for:

Latin American Culture: hoping this will help prepare me better to add more history and culture to my Latin American fiction course next spring

The Fiction of Relationship: not totally sure I will be able to complete this one, as there are several books on the reading list I’ve never read and don’t own! But I’m very curious about the class, and what they will discuss for the books I am familiar with, like Beloved and Ficciones.

This time around, I’m planning on taking more of a cherry-pick approach; I’m definitely aiming to complete the Latin American class, but if I don’t get to every assignment, I’m okay with that. With the fiction class, I’m planning to start off as more of an interested observer, and if I get hooked, then I will do my best to complete what I can. I think this is probably the most realistic approach for me, and I think it will also help ensure that I do feel I’ve gained something for the hours I end up investing in the class.

The next big Coursera development that intrigues me is their entry into professional development courses for K-12 teachers; I’m especially interested in this course on Brain-Targeted Teaching because I’m familiar with some of the professor’s work, and she is the former principal of the elementary school my daughters attended until this year. I also added this course on museum teaching strategies for the classroom to my “watch list,” so that Coursera will alert me when future sessions are scheduled. I have no idea whether MOOCs are a good venue for effective professional development, but I’m fascinated to see how this unfolds.

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Poetry Month: Pulitzer Remix

Posted by Jackie in media mentions, personal goals, poetry, writing and tagged with , , , , , ,
Elbow Room (short story collection)

Elbow Room (short story collection) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

For National Poetry Month 2013, I’m tackling the biggest challenge I’ve set for myself as a poet; I’m one of 85 participating poets in the Pulitzer Remix project, sponsored by The Found Poetry Review. Each of us chose a novel or collection of stories that has won the Pulitzer, and are “remixing” it by creating found poems from the text, one poem for each day of April. You can find out more about the project or the poets, and read the poems here. I first posted about this project, after Anjali tagged me in a meme, and now it’s finally launched.

My text is Elbow Room, a collection of stories that won the Prize in 1978, which also happens to be the year I was born. You can view all the poems I’ve written so far here; just click on each image of the book cover to see the individual poems. I admit that at first I was a little dismayed that I hadn’t been quick enough to nab one of my favorite books, but I think this has made it more challenging, and I’m looking forward to remixing more novels in the future.

For my poems, I’m using several different techniques. Some poems I created from choosing random words from the list of story titles, while others I chose from stories themselves. I’m creating one poem each that will stick to one particular story and be titled the same, but will deviate from the content of the story itself, if that makes sense. I also got inspired early on by these two characters I’ve dreamed up, and have been writing a series of love songs about their relationship, with words from the entire book.

I’m so proud to be part of this project, as the work I’ve seen from other poets has been amazing, and it’s been both inspiring and challenging for me as well. I feel reinvigorated in my life in general these days, and as a writer, I feel like I’ve opened an exciting chapter. Come check it out!

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From My Event Calendar….

Posted by Jackie in personal goals, poetry, writing and tagged with , , ,
Baltimore Museum of Art on a fall morning.

Baltimore Museum of Art on a fall morning. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Last year, I realized that amidst all my color-coded categories in my Outlook calendar, I had neglected to add one for myself. I have six different work categories and four different family categories, but none just for me–a not-too-subtle sign that I need to make some literal space in my life for my own needs and interests! So I made a category for myself (a relaxing seafoam green) and have tried to make more “events” for myself, whether it’s something as mundane as a haircut, or plans with friends. Sometimes, I even get to add something like the event I’m talking about today……

Last February, I was pleased and proud to have two poems published in the Feb 2012 edition of the light ekphrastic, an online journal dedicated to ekphrasis art and literature. I submitted a poem, Chant for Cooks, and was paired with a painter, who sent me a painting of hers, and then we created new pieces inspired by what our partner had sent us. It was such a fun experience, and continued my love affair with ekphrastic art that began with a few workshops I took at the Baltimore Museum of Art several years ago, and has included one of my poems being included in the audio tour for the BMA’s permanent collection.

A few weeks from now, my poems will be featured among other works from the journal as part of exhibition at a local art gallery, and I’m so thrilled. I’m going to bring my family, soak in all the inspiring work from other contributors, and maybe even talk a little about my own writing/creative process. It’s my husband’s birthday, but supportive guy that he is, he is just as excited to attend as I am, and I’m enjoying the idea of showing my girls this side of myself as well.

As lovely as I expect this experience to be, it’s also a good reminder to myself to keep making space in my life for me as a person, outside of the fulfillment I find in my family and job. Whether it’s blogging, writing, or seeking out other events and pursuits I enjoy, I know we’ll all be the richer for it.

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Meal Planning, 1/20-1/26

Posted by Jackie in cooking, family life, meal planning, personal goals and tagged with , , , ,
English: Chef Pepín Slow Cooker

English: Chef Pepín Slow Cooker (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

As part of my foodie resolutions for 2013, I thought I would post whenever I manage to do actual meal planning or freezer cooking. This should keep me accountable to myself for making progress on this goal, and help me remember past plans, what worked and what didn’t, and what I can replicate in other weeks of the year. I also think keeping better track of what I make for the family will help me see patterns (what works for us, what usually doesn’t) and track changes I want to make.

For this week, here’s what I’m making:

Breakfast:

Double batch of pumpkin muffins, possibly adding chocolate chips

Lunches:

Sophie and Lucy: mini pizzas and potato/chocolate chip cookies (I’ll pack myself cookies too, most likely)
Jackie: baked potato soup, modified by adding some chopped/steamed broccoli
Husband is welcome to share my soup, but will probably make himself rice and beans or pack leftovers

Dinner:

Sunday: Slow Cooker BBQ Pulled Pork sandwiches
Monday: Chicken and Rice Casserole
Tuesday: Chicken-Spinach Pasta Bake, subbing ground turkey for chicken and fresh for frozen spinach, as suggested in the comments
Wednesday: leftovers
Thursday: leftovers
Friday: Homemade Pizza

To go with meals/lunches: Cheddar Biscuits, though I make them with Colby-Jack cheese instead

Notes:

With this meal plan, I’m taking advantage of Monday being a holiday to make something with a little more cooking time, and planning for no cooking on Wednesday and Thursday, which are the longest days of the week due to Lucy’s art and ballet classes. The slow cooker pork BBQ sandwiches should make a good gameday dinner, since there’s a big playoff football game, and also keep the oven free so I can get a lot of the baking and/or soup making done. Three of the dinner recipes are new, as well as the soup recipe, while all others are ones I’ve tried and liked before.

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Foodie Resolutions

Posted by Jackie in all about me, cooking, family life, personal goals and tagged with , , , , , ,
Brussels Sprouts

Brussels Sprouts (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Over at The Kitchn, one of my favorite foodie sites, they are posting reader resolutions having to do with food. Here are the ones I found most inspiring and aligned with my own goals for the year:

Learn three new recipes a month

I’m planning to draw mine from the piles of recipes I have on Pinterest, in an effort to actually maintain my boards there as useful resources and not just another time-suck. My current practice is to go back and comment on any recipe I’ve pinned and actually made, so I’d like to keep doing that as the year progresses.

Cook more whole foods for my family

This goes along well with my freezer cooking goal, and I’m planning to begin by stocking up on homemade tomato sauce for my freezer and then continue in my quest to find my favorite homemade pizza dough recipe.

Experiment with food I think I don’t like

Spinach, arugula, salad, dressing, gravy: these are only a few of the foods I currently eat that would have been unthinkable for me at different points in my life. I was a legendarily picky eater as a child, and one of the great jobs of becoming a decent home cook has been the ability to customize my meals enough to avoid foods I detest (like ricotta cheese, which will never appear in a pasta dish of mine). Since I’ve found some success with adding foods, I’d like to add more, especially in the vegetable arena. I’ve got a few recipes with butternut squash and Brussels sprouts I’d like to try, as well as cauliflower, to help me make more progress.

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Old Goals, New Goals

Posted by Jackie in blogging, cooking, personal goals, poetry, writing and tagged with , , ,
English: Two New Year's Resolutions postcards

English: Two New Year’s Resolutions postcards (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The time for New Year’s resolutions has come around again, and I can’t resist jumping in, like I always do. However, I’ve made so many goals over the past years that instead of making all new goals, I’m just going to revisit some old ones and push forward for more progress.

  • Publishing 100 blog posts in a year: I published 80 blog posts in 2012, close but not quite to my goal of 100, so I’m renewing this one for 2013 with no changes
  • sending out at least two poems and two nonfiction essays: braving the beast of submissions is an ever-present challenge for me as a writer; last year I published two poems and one nonfiction essay, so I’m keeping it constant for poems and stepping it up for essays
  • restarting my gratitude journal habit and attempting to write in it daily: I made an entry almost every day in 2011 and kept it going for a good portion of early 2012; this is a habit that made a serious different in my life and should be relatively easy to pick back up again
  • finishing three needlework projects-in-progress: I’ve made various goals before about creativity, but also nested inside this goal is the hope that tackling these projects again will also reduce my screen time usage, another continual goal of mine
  • freezer cooking one day a month: another recurring goal has been the desire to eat better, with less frenzy at the end of the day. Using Pinterest for meal planning has kept me trying new recipes this year, but I would love to stock my freezer with meals once a month and be able to rely on them during the busiest days and weeks. I have a cookbook specifically designed for this purpose, and Pinterest is full of recipes and tips; I just need to commit to doing it once a month.
  • doing some kind of exercise once a week: I know, I know. All you marathoners and yoga beasts are laughing right now, but this is a weak area for me and always has been, so I’m trying to set a feasible goal, one that isn’t a huge leap but would cause some tangible good if I come anywhere close to meeting it

All of these goals have a common thread: taking better care of myself, and treating myself better, which sounds like the perfect theme for the new year.  None of them have anything to do with my husband, my children, or my job, which also strikes me as a healthy move towards better balance in my life, and better attention focused on myself as a person, apart from these enormous and wonderful roles that consume so much of my life.

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2012 in Review

Posted by Jackie in all about me, blogging, personal goals, writing

In January, I was full of plans and goals. I designed a new class on Latin American Literature, made specific writing goals, and set about doing a massive book purge. I was unhappy with the amount of screen time I used, and thought about ways to reduce it, while also reflecting on the progress (writing more poems, decluttering, seeing friends) I had made in some goals, while neglecting others (exercise and cleaning the basement continue to be issues!).

February rolled in and was a big month for us, full of new adventures. We decided our girls would be in a new school the next year, and started thinking about what that might mean for all of us. I tried some new teaching tricks, like asking my students to write about their values, and remembered why I love Catcher in the Rye so much. After a fantastic anniversary trip, we were grounded quickly by family responsibilities and health issues. I read a few great books, realized I had written 500 posts, and had a few poems published.

March came in like neither a lion or a lamb, but something much more magical, as our senior class turned the school into Hogwarts for the day. I tried out some readings and activities about The Hunger Games with my students, and thought about how best to evaluate my teaching and use music when I teach literature. I got a little obsessed with Pinterest, thought some more about change and skinned knees, and read another great book, about blood, bones and butter.

April was another jam-packed month for us. We took an all-girls road trip to Hilton Head for spring break, and I baked a cake and thought about appreciation and public schools. I did some emotional eating, had a terrible Monday morning, and thought about poetry as a kind of journaling. I celebrated National Poetry Month once again, write a lot of drafts of poems, and revised my approach to Poetry March Madness. I read a brutally beautiful memoir, was somewhat disappointed by an old favorite, and finally got to explore Pottermore.

May was a milestone month for us. I realized my fantastic ten-year-old girls would be the Class of 2020, which made me feel a little on the elderly side as I celebrated my first decade of mothering. As my school year was winding down, I got a wonderful reminder from my students about the joy of teaching.  June saw our little Lucy take the stage in her first big recital, and I tackled a project I’d been thinking about for months and made a High Fidelity playlist. My girls and I got obsessed with tabletop board and card games and picked up a few new favorites, Sleeping Queens and Dweebies. I read some really good books and realized how fast the summer was slipping away.

July was a very light blogging month for me; apparently, all I did was my traditional summer cleaning and go see the Katy Perry movie.  August was also light, as I spent a lot of time in Westeros and made some pretty intense back-to-school to-do lists. No birthday post from me for the first time in years. It’s clear to me now, looking back, that my energy levels had dropped significantly, and that I was not feeling completely like myself.

In September, I tried to reinvigorate myself by tackling my first MOOC, an amazing online course in modern poetry, got to read some wonderful poetry and write my first essay as a student in a long time. As much as I enjoyed it, I knew I wasn’t feeling right, and finally got some answers about my mind and body health. I ended the month hoping to feel better soon, and spending some time thinking about grading jail.

October saw me somewhat on the upswing, trying to get back in touch with myself as I thought about what counts as cooking, tried to get back in touch with a gratitude mindset, and made a playlist of songs with biblical allusions. Although I felt a little swamped by ModPo, I plunged forward and even submitted some found poems to a new market for me.

The upswing didn’t last long, and I got bogged down, both by an increasingly hectic school year, but also a general fogginess and murkiness in my own head. I only wrote one post in November, about some different bits and pieces that were holding my interest, and one post in December, trying to take the first step back towards blogging and a deeper personal revival.

Watching my blogging dwindle over the course of the year helped me really see when I started to feel shaky, but it also really helped me once again see how important blogging is in my life.  I lost my gratitude habit this year, but I also lost touch with a method of self-reflection and creativity that has meant so much to me over the past five years. As I think about the upcoming year, the resolution that seems most vitally important to me is to recommit myself to this space, to this pursuit, and to revitalizing myself as well.

Found Poetry

Posted by Jackie in calls for submissions, personal goals, poetry, teaching and tagged with , , ,

Another landmark on the road to feeling more like myself: I submitted a poem this weekend! True, I didn’t write a poem this weekend, but instead, I dusted off a poem from my notebooks and sent it off to The Found Poetry Review, a journal I discovered recently when I realized the founder and I are both taking ModPo together (though she’s probably not as far behind on the reading as I am).

I submitted a cento, a form I have experimented with before and find to be intriguing. Coincidentally, “cento” comes from the Latin for “patchwork,” so perhaps my blog title gives me a special connection to this form! However, found poetry can come from all kinds of sources: advertisements, manuals, old magazines, dictionaries, product packaging, etc. I think my next experiment might come from cookbooks, but Twitter or spam emails/comments might be fun sources too. FYI: the Found Poetry Review Twitter account has this to say: “Found poetry sources usually used poorly: song titles, Craigslist ads, book spines.” If you want more tips, here’s a great how-to piece. This can also be a fun teaching tool; I once had freshmen write found poems from different chapters of The Catcher in the Rye.

While submitting these days often involved nothing more than writing an email or attaching a document, I’m choosing to see it as a small flag of progress, or perhaps, a dormant part of myself showing signs of vitality again.

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ModPo and Me: Swamped (Part Three)

Posted by Jackie in personal goals, poetry, writing and tagged with , , , , , ,
Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2 (1912) by M...

Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2 (1912) by Marcel Duchamp displays Cubist and Futurist characteristics (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The time has come, the ModPo student said, to pick and choose and avoid being totally lost.

Yes, as I had suspected, the reading load has gotten a little hard for me to squeeze in as the pace of my own school year gets hectic and the poems get more challenging and unfamiliar. Even though the ModPo poems and videos are usually on the shorter side (videos usually clock in anywhere from 10-15 minutes), I like to watch them when I know I won’t be distracted and I’m mentally alert, two factors that aren’t coming in tandem that often around here. So what to do? In order to stay apace in time for the next writing assignment, I decided to cherrypick which readings I most wanted to tackle and leave the rest by the wayside. Sorry, Cid Corman and Rae Armantrout–your time will come, but not today.

From Week Three, “imagism,” I chose to read and watch the videos for Sea Rose, by H.D. and Ezra Pound’s “In a Station of the Metro.” I’ve read a little of H.D.’s work before, and have always wanted to understand Pound better. I think I chose wisely, as both served well to introduce me to the next section of the course, the ideas of startling juxtaposition, of concrete images, of using language for new and exciting purposes.

From the second half of Week Three’s readings, focusing exclusively on William Carlos Williams, I first studied “This Is Just To Say” and The Red Wheelbarrow, two poems that are widely anthologized and most like to have students saying, “How does this count as poetry? I don’t get it.” The ModPo discussion videos, as always, were hugely illuminating for me; these videos, with Al Filreis and the graduate TAs of the course, are worth attempting the course for, even if you don’t dig deeper into the course at all. I had never thought of “This Is Just To Say” as a poem about marriage and sexual politics before, but it makes total sense to me now. Is that because the discussion video was so good, or because now, when encountering the poem, I come to it as a woman married to a man who would definitely eat my carefully saved breakfast plums if I forgot to leave a note? It was interesting to me too that many of the TAs seemed to receive “Red Wheelbarrow” fairly neutrally, but Professor Al managed to lead an invigorating discussion nonetheless.

After getting a fresh perspective on those two, I was then attracted to Williams’ Portrait of a Lady, paired with Marcel Duchamp’s Nude Descending a Staircase. I had referenced Staircase before when teaching a short unit on modernist fiction and art with eleventh graders and was excited to encounter it again as part of a poetry pairing. Thankfully, there are also videos for each, and choosing to study this poem and painting also dovetails with my long-standing interest in ekphrastic work.

This week’s challenge: to tackle as many readings as I can, not get totally flummoxed by Gertrude Stein, and complete the second writing assignment (which, as I predicted, has a stricter word limit and more detailed guidelines).

New long-term goal: to visit the Kelly Writers House someday, to experience the environment where the videos are filmed and maybe enjoy a reading or workshop.

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Taping My Teaching, and Thoughts on Evaluation

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

Evaluating student performance is a big part of teaching, but another complicated aspect is how we can evaluate our courses and our own performance in them. Teacher evaluation is a hot topic these days, as people talk about performance bonuses, teacher tenure and the impact good teachers can have on students, but how do we know what make a great teacher and also, how can we see how to improve ourselves?

One tool for teachers is having themselves taped while teaching, as Larry Ferlazzo writes about in this post. He was not only working with a consultant who taped him, but then proffered the footage to his students and conducting a discussion of what they think they saw and they think he should take away from that. I love the dual focus on what the teacher and students need to be doing for effective learning; in reading this description, it seems so powerful and so constructive, and almost guaranteed to help a motivated teacher like Ferlazzo improve his teaching. But I feel a shudder of fear at the idea myself–offering myself up to my students to critique so openly?

This idea of equity in vulnerability is one I’m familiar with from writing workshops, and one that Penny Kittle spoke about it in Write Beside Them: Risk, Voice, and Clarity in High School Writing, but while I’ve adapted my teaching in many ways based on books I’ve read over the past few years, this is one big area in which I’ve made little progress. I would guess I’m not alone in this; teaching is a full-body job where we are already constantly being judged by our students, and we are all aware of this. Recently on Facebook, a friend of mine wrote about the evaluations she got from her most recent students, who commented on her teaching style and course material, but also on her wardrobe, body type, general appearance and workout habits. This style of candor is less common at the high school level, but not because they aren’t thinking it! I’m sure asking students is valuable, but I think the taping would bring a valuable and constructive focus to their comments.

At a recent faculty meeting, we traded the evaluations we do in our courses and debated how best to structure them, when to offer them, and how many times during the year we evaluate our courses. It gave a lot to think about for my own evaluations, but taping myself? That would be a big leap in evaluating myself and my teaching, and I think it’s a worthy goal for my near future.

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