Category Archives: personal life

geometric shapes with watercolor

ETCW 2020: Stay Home Edition

This blog was born as part of my Lilly Teacher Creativity Fellowship, where I got to blow $10k on writing workshops and a sweet new laptop (thanks, Lilly Endowment!), and one of my annual traditions is to update it during Teacher Camp, aka the Extending Teacher Creativity Workshop which is usually held at Indiana State University but this year–for obvious reasons–was held virtually.

Susan Powers, the woman who organizes the event each year is always an incredible powerhouse but this year, considering I got THREE shipments of workshop supplies and swag, and so did everybody else, she deserves a medal.

Sessions were held over Zoom, and while I certainly missed the delightful catering that characterizes most years’ workshops, and the random encounters with such a wide swath of my profession, it was great to still be able to see my “camp friends” and try out some new things. Each year after the first year teachers can choose a big workshop and a “mini” workshop; this year, I chose Made to Create (aka a watercolor workshop) for my major course and a bracelet-making workshop for my mini. That meant I got a box of watercolor supplies, a lightboard (!!), modeling clay and twine, a very sharp Exact-o knife, and a whole bunch of other treats (black masking tape! Very sharp scissors! A variety-pack of Sharpies! Yes, I am easy to please).

toddler watercoloring
The decoy paint station was a hit!

Our instructor for the watercolor workshop worked her tail off, too, making us TEN videos highlighting different skills, techniques, and projects. After setting up my work station, and then setting up a decoy station to distract my kids, I got to work, and…. managed to watch and paint along with three of the ten videos.

Don’t get me wrong – I still had an excellent time. And since the videos are still up for the time being, it’s possible that I might “catch up” later (not likely, mind you… but possible!). It was hard to carve out the time while I was still physically at home — when I go to Terre Haute, I’m gone, so it’s a lot easier to focus — but I still really enjoyed what I got to do.

It also let me be a student on a Zoom call and really experience the distractions, frustrations, and challenges of e-learning from the student side. There were some plusses (doing the videos when I wanted to, at my own pace) and some minuses (having to do videos instead of being in the room with others, to learn collaboratively or get immediate feedback). I already have a tendency to “go rogue” on things like this, and being in a room full of other people can help me stay focused and keep me from losing track of time (two opposite problems, both of which I have when it comes to art).

me and my toddler, who is brandishing a paintbrush
Two novice painters!

As usual, I finished ETCW grateful for the Lilly Foundation and its support of Indiana teachers, with some good ideas to steal and some reminders about what doesn’t work (definitely remind everybody who isn’t talking to stay on mute… yikes).

Now I’m going to go bust out my sewing machine and see if I can make my ETCW2020 t-shirt into an ETCW2020 face mask. Wish me luck!

Staying Home

Well, I was just thinking what a shame it was that I hadn’t updated my blog in so long that I had to go look up my login/password info, and I looked back to see that my last update was… right before ‘normal life’ crashed and burned thanks to Covid-19! So I suppose that explains why.

the front yard of a brightly-painted house with a verdant garden, sloppy grass, and a Black Lives Matter sign, on a sunny day
lots of home improvement projects, not so much with the blog updates

I got to try online-only teaching for the last quarter of the 2019-2020 school year, which was quite an experience – it felt like being a first-year teacher again, and not in a good way – and now I’m hovering in uncertainty with the rest of the world – planning for the worst, hoping for the best: I’m set to start school again (staff orientation) next Tuesday in person, but the board has pushed our start date back and put us on a hybrid model (50% of students in the building at a time, blended with e-Learning) so no matter what happens (hybrid? Virtual?) I’m sure 2020-2021 will be a heck of a learning experience.

I mean, if we didn’t understand before, we certainly know now why “May you live in interesting times” is a vicious curse.

Being used to “Dwell[ing] in possibility” like my good friend Emily Dickinson, that means I basically haven’t done any planning for the school year (yet), despite the fact that (once again) I have five preps and 2 of them are new (English 9 Honors, an all-new class, and English Lab, a remedial class that has to be planned anew each year to meet student needs (at least the way I do it)). Interesting times indeed!

So I’m going to try to figure it out as I go, as usual, and I’m going to do my annual “oh hey look a blog” posts any day now – ETCW was virtual this year, which was both better and worse, and I have another short story from the NYC Midnight competition to post – and maybe, just maybe, add some more teaching-related content… as soon as I wrap my head around online and/or hybrid teaching!

hey look I have a blog

So, I haven’t updated in like a year and a half… I blame that on this dude:

Kid #2, offering you tea from his plastic tea set

He’s one. So… I suspect that explains it.

Tonight I spent some time updating my bio photo (hmm, my hair is now… eight inches longer and much more purple?) and cleaning up odds and ends, but I’m really hoping to update more regularly (uh, what else is new?!?). I definitely have some “Lessons from the Classics” posts in mind, since I got to teach AP Literature & Composition for the first time, and because I reworked my Creative Writing class a bit. Next year I’ll be teaching a one-semester Poetry elective for the first time (!!!) so I’m excited to dig into that genre more (I am not often an inspired poet, but I am a competent one, and I’m open to improvement, so…).

Interlude: Alaska

Spent a week in the northernmost state, and BOY was it amazing. Expect more on that later, since school starts tomorrow. (!!!) But I definitely had a lot of Thoughts and gathered a lot of Creative Energy (and explored lots of great settings for a series of murder mysteries, I think, not that I have time for that). I’m not a master photographer by any stretch of the imagination, but even a sucker like me with a busted-up phone can take a breathtaking pic in such a gorgeous setting.

You Again

I’ve been in one of those emotional fugue states where very little gets done that isn’t absolutely necessary – so I’ve definitely blown it re: this year’s resolution to blog weekly. Hmm. Perhaps, since it’s the solstice, I’ll have a mid-year reboot?

Or perhaps not.

I’ve been re-reading old favorite books, playing with a toddler, and watching my husband play the video game I got him for Valentine’s Day, so for once I’ve been busy with good things… but very busy, nonetheless.

I’ve also been doing some research for my WIPs and absolutely ignoring the fact that I should be prepping for the fall (I’m teaching English 10, which I haven’t taught in 10 years, so… basically a new class). It’s been great!

I keep telling myself that fallow periods are important for creativity, but it’s still a bummer. At least I’ve got a writing group to yell at me (in a good-natured way) when I fail to produce. Outside accountability is very important to me!

there’s that whooshing sound again

 Soooo yeah. That resolution of mine to blog more? Well…

Oh, and those ten pages I was supposed to turn in to my writing group… last Tuesday?

Hmm. And when is enrollment for grad classes for this semester? Oh. Really? Three months ago, you say…?

Yeah. I’ve been falling behind.

But I’m enjoying the ride and I haven’t fallen TOO far to catch up (I hope?) so here we go again!

Some things I’ve been putting off lately:  Continue reading there’s that whooshing sound again

The Magicians

I just started watching Season 1 of The Magicians (SyFy) on Netflix last week and have been steadily bingeing through all of it with C. Tragically, tonight he has choir and all we have left is the finale and Season 2 premiers TOMORROW and it looks like SyFy lets you watch things online live and that might (MIGHT) be enough to get me to forgive them for spelling their name that way (SyFy? Seriously?).

As we went through the episodes–“This is like if someone was writing Harry Potter fanfic and kept going further and further off course… in the best possible way,” I said, early on–I started Tweeting about it, made some friends via hashtags… I might or might not have followed most of the cast on Twitter. Um… uhoh. Am I joining a fandom??

I’ve been thinking about adding TV recaps to my blogging fodder. I think maybe #TheMagicians might be the show I choose.

Unless I just spend the next few weeks entering their writing contest (i.e. FANFICTION!). 1500 words by Feb. 8th…

Piece of cake. I’ve got plenty of time and tons of ideas.

…right?

Writing Dates

thanks, memegenerator.com!One of the things I constantly struggle with is finding time for writing. I work full time, have a toddler, and occasionally pretend to have a social life, family life, or marriage. When the heck am I going to fit in writing?

I jot stuff down from time to time, of course, but usually my best ideas come when–I’m way too busy to do anything about them.

And I’m not at a point where I can turn it on like a faucet and just squeeze in half an hour of writing every day. (Someday, maybe?)

So one thing that I’ve been trying to make time for is writing dates: times when I set aside time with some accountability partners to Get Shit Done.

Sometimes this is more effective–when I’m primed for it–and sometimes less (like tonight, when I’m tired after a three-day weekend where I was solo parenting while C worked). It can be really hard to hit that sweet spot. I think making it more regular might help, though, so my writing buddies and I have agreed on two more dinner-and-writing dates in the next three weeks–meaning that, hopefully, I’ll have 10 more pages to turn in to my writing group by our next meeting! Right?

 

….right????

 

D:

Late for Saturday, or early for Tuesday…?

Sometimes it’s so hard to tell.

The beginning of a new semester is always tricky, but especially when you’re sick (still? again? who even knows at this point).

I have a new bunch of students in Creative Writing this semester, and it’s about half the size of last semester’s class–and 80% male. This is the first time I’ve had enough kids sign up to teach it twice in a year, but with the smaller group I suspect it’s going to be a very different experience. Last semester had a lot of humor and several big personalities, and this semester seems like mostly silent students.

But our first unit is Creative Nonfiction, so I’m looking forward to having them write and design their own Six-Word Memoirs.

I just killed like an hour looking for the one I designed on Canva, but have now given up on that. My six-word memoir: “Learned more from teaching than school.”

What’s yours?

 

New Year, New Me? (Nah)

archer-wiki_characters_archer-vice_skinny-pam_01Well, after my flurry of November activity/NaNoWriMo, I sure did taper off on blogging, didn’t I?

And since today’s New Year’s Day, it’s a perfect time to resolve to blog more in 2017!

Among other resolutions, of course. But don’t worry, no “new me” stuff — as Pam says, I really like me. Continue reading New Year, New Me? (Nah)