Tag: teaching

Mom To Mom, Teacher To Teacher, Writer to Writer: A Conversation With Erin Lindsay McCabe

Posted on September 25, 2014 by Jennifer Wolfe

It’s a good sign when you meet someone for the first time and you’re dressed in identical outfits. I guess Erin Lindsay McCabe and I were both more than a little excited the northern California heat had broken and jeans were finally not too hot and sticky to wear out for coffee. Paired with cream-colored lace shirts and sandals, we giggled as we looked at each other in person for the first time. This synchronicity started off what would prove to be a delightful Sunday morning chatting about parenting, teaching, writing, and her latest book, I Shall Be Near To You, as we sipped organic coffee (me) and spicy chai (her) and nibbled on freshly made pumpkin muffins and bear claws. I found Erin to be as real as her Civil War character Rosetta as mom to mom, teacher to teacher, writer to writer, we filled three hours in a little bakery/coffee shop in northern California, the start of what I know will be a new friendship – mom to mom, teacher to teacher, writer to writer.

I first ‘met’ Erin when I devoured her Civil War era book, I Shall Be Near To You, over the summer. I’ll admit, I was on a historical fiction kick, and jumped at hers after seeing the cover – loved it – and was enticed by the love-story angle of the title. After only a few pages, I adored the main characters, feisty Rosetta and tender Jeremiah – and knew I had to tweet the author right away:

mamawolfeto2: @ErinLindsMcCabe So excited to start#ishallbeneartoyou by @erinlindsmccabe I love Rosetta already! #books #civilwar

ErinLindsMcCabe: @mamawolfeto2 Oh I’m so glad you <3 Rosetta! (Me too!)

mamawolfeto2: @ErinLindsMcCabe Oh yes, I’m hooked! Love how you so tenderly portrayed their ‘practice’ – refreshing #ishallbeneartoyou

ErinLindsMcCabe: @mamawolfeto2 Aw, gotta love Jeremiah too. ; )

mamawolfeto2: @ErinLindsMcCabe oh yes. He surprised me with his sweetness.

mamawolfeto2: @ErinLindsMcCabe just finished#ishallbeneartoyou Wiping away the tears. ❤️

Yes, I devoured this book…and was thrilled to meet a new author who was so eager to talk about her book, her characters, and life as a writing mom. And then life interrupted…

So on that somewhat smoky Sunday morning, inside a brightly lit cafe near the Sierra foothills, we picked up where we left off, and found threads of motherhood, teaching, and writing peppering our three hour conversation:

On motherhood:

I think every writer-mom wonders how a published author ever finds the time to make a book a reality. Turns out, Erin wrote the entire draft of I Shall Be Near To You before her son was born, and spent the early years of his life editing, rewriting, and submitting for publication. We talked about the writer/mom life-balance, so hard to juggle that precious time between naps and preschool and play dates, and the palpable awareness of being present during those years-all years, really-when our children are under our wings. Now working on her next novel, Erin notices an acute change in her writing/editing practice, and devoutly sticks to her ‘1,000 words-a-day’ commitment, something she credits to Anne Lamott and found enormously helpful after reading Bird By Bird. “It’s the doing,” Erin shared with me. “Start with 250 words, then 400, 500, and 1,000.”

On teaching:

I love meeting teachers, especially English teachers. They just GET my life. They understand what it’s like to balance motherhood and work, they understand how emotionally and physically draining teaching all day and then coming home with stacks of papers to grade. Erin GETS it – she spent years working as a high school English teacher in the Bay Area, and then again as a community college writing professor. She understands the challenge of attempting to squeeze out an ounce of creativity before daybreak, or most often for her, late into the night. I had to laugh when she mention her good fortune that her three year old was a night owl-I actually craved those moments when my own two babies were tucked into bed at night and I could choose between grading and writing!

Our conversations circled around how to teach controversial novels, what was just the right amount of feedback to give students, and how we wished our kids would dig deeper into their writing and not give up with a first draft. Her inclusion of ‘hot topics’ in I Shall Be Near To You, such as homosexuality, war, young love and even profanity have caused some controversy for a few of her readers, but for me, her choices not only provided a realistic story line and characterizations, but also shrunk the time between the Civil War and what humanity is still dealing with today. I loved making the teacher-writer connection, and her eagerness to jump right back into teacher-mode was evident when we started to chat about writing – our writing.

On writing:

Erin knew how much I adored I Shall Be Near To You before I met her, and after listening to our conversation swirl in and out of motherhood and teaching, I realized how closely woven her life was with the book and characters, it actually made me love it more! As a lover of historical fiction, I couldn’t wait to ask her how she approached the idea of historical accuracy – something I know requires not only tremendous research, but also carries with it tremendous risk that historians will dismiss her story as too fictionalized. Turns out, the idea that the story of her real-life main character, Rosetta, would be lost due to errors in historical accuracy was foremost on her mind during the writing and editing process. Erin’s choices to depict battle scenes as accurately as possible not only added depth and grittiness to the finished novel, but also were the hardest to write-after writing each battle scene she described herself as being in a ‘dark place’. She found herself attempting to balance just the right amount of detail for authenticity with the numbness that would come with an overabundance of the gore that Civil War soldiers experienced. Interestingly, she intentionally chose not to directly include slavery in the novel, feeling that after 10 years of reading and researching the ‘real’ Rosetta’s letters written during the Civil War, it wasn’t part of what she recorded and therefore not authentic to the character’s story.

Our coffee drained, pastries long gone, and families wondering if we’d ever come home, Erin and I ended our mom-teacher-writer conversation with hugs and expectations: new writing, new conversations, new friendship. What a lovely morning, what a lovely writer.

You absolutely don’t want to miss I Shall Be Near To You, Erin Lindsay McCabe’s ‘extraordinary novel about a strong-willed woman who disguises herself as a man in order to fight beside her husband in the Union Army, inspired by the letters of a remarkable female soldier who fought in the Civil War.’ Now out in paperback!

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Jennifer Wolfe

Jennifer Wolfe, a writer-teacher-mom, is dedicated to finding the extraordinary in the ordinary moments of life by thinking deeply, loving fiercely, and teaching audaciously. Jennifer is a Google Certified Educator, Hyperdoc fanatic, and a voracious reader. Read her stories on her blog, mamawolfe, and grab free copies of her teaching and parenting resources.

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Autumnal Resolutions and A Quest for Perfection

Posted on September 4, 2014 by Jennifer Wolfe

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I’ve never really left school. Well, that’s not exactly true. I did take a gap year between college and earning my teaching credential. And then there was that one year after Cameron was born – the only year in the last 14 – that I haven’t stood in front of 13-year-olds on a first day of school. I’ve changed the ways I teach the first day over the years, moving from teacher directed bore-them-to-tears rants about rules and procedures towards student centered get-them-writing-and talking activities.

So I find myself, the last evening of Labor Day weekend, home and going over the first of 52 weeks of grading. Only three official days in, and nothing has really changed. I still got the first day jitters, I still spent the weekend in my classroom preparing lessons, and I still wonder how I’ll make this year better than the last. I strive for something close to perfection.

As I was skimming over their freshly written ‘author pages’, one question and response kept jumping out at me: a far too overwhelming number said their one goal for this year was to get straight As.

They’re 13 years old at best. They want to be perfect. Boys and girls – no difference there. And I sit here, taking in the enormity of their request, and wonder – is that what THEY really want?

And this time, after teaching 23 years of 7th, 8th and 9th graders, I just stopped and sighed, and I realized that if this was what my kids were expecting, I might be the very person to keep them from reaching their goals. I just cannot imagine a world where everyone is perfect.

And it made me think about my own kids, my own life, and how as I move closer and closer to my fifth decade of living, how this idea of perfection has ridden copilot with me for a great long part of my life, too.

For me, the rhythm of the academic year has always been the back beat to my life. New Year’s Resolutions haven’t had much impact; for me, it’s the autumnal resolutions that make most sense. This autumn, I’m back at it. What do I really want from this year? What will make my heart shine, my spirit ignite, and in June, what will I feel I’ve done that made a difference?

It’s most certainly not about personal perfection for me. That quest was left behind in the last decade – no sense in revisiting that now.

It’s taken me a few days to write this, mainly, I think, due to that idea of how to simultaneously push kids towards their future while teaching them that life is oh, so much more than a quest for an “A”. How do I show them that it’s so much more about the experiences along the way, the knowledge they soak up as they read and write and talk and think…how do I teach them to WANT it? The idea that learning and success take grit, that no matter what comment I write on their essay, or what grade they earn on a test, that learning doesn’t end at the bell, that every day is ‘to be continued’ and all we can do is our best. How can I show them that really the only goal I have for them this year is that they walk out the door in June feeling that they are stronger, more confident, thinking deeper and just a touch more articulate than they were when they walked in last week?

My autumnal resolutions. I’ve got some work to do, and not just in the classroom.

What about you, dear reader? What is your autumnal resolution? Are you on the perfection quest, too?

Jennifer Wolfe

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Teaching Middle School: My Dream Job

Posted on March 17, 2014 by Jennifer Wolfe

As I was driving home after a 13-hour day last week, it occurred to me that I had just hosted my twenty-fourth Open House. And boy, was I tired.

Yep-I’ve been teaching middle school for that long. I started teaching long before I had children – I wasn’t even married yet! I started teaching before cell phones, in a ‘technology school’ which boasted a cutting edge sort of network for computers, and we all had to learn how to email. When I went home, I used DOS to create spreadsheets for grades, and couldn’t even imagine an instance when my students might contact me at home after work on it.

Times have changed, but my love for my job hasn’t. I think I have a dream job. Some people think I’m crazy for teaching 7th and 8th graders for this long. They call me things like ‘saint’, and tell me how grateful they are for me – and that they could never ‘do what I do’.

To be honest, they’re probably right. It takes a certain kind of craziness to do what I do every day. to give you an idea, imagine walking into your job and being bombarded from the moment you open the door. Yes, I’m a question answering queen. I hear explanations, excuses, and sometimes even legitimate questions about what happened inbetween the time they last saw me and the moment I stopped gulping down my thermos of coffee. And then the day begins. From 8:00 until whenever I can crawl out the door (usually between 4 and 5), I am surrounded by kids in the throes of puberty. They are self-conscious, funny, silly, frustrating, and thought-provoking. They make me a better human, and most certainly a better parent.

Teaching has taught me to create strong boundaries, to protect my personal life and value my job as a mother just as much as my job in the classroom. There’s been a few times I quit teaching – both because I started to feel that I was spending so much time with other people’s kids, I was going to end up with problems with my own.

Back in the early nineties, before I had kids, every year one of my 7th grade students got pregnant. It shocks me then the same as it shocks me now-especially when I think that that child could be having their own child by now. I so clearly remember the first time one of my girls, Tiffany, brought in her baby to show me. She had always been one of those students I worried about, and I guess my intuition was correct. I can still see her round, freckled face, tousled blonde hair and bright blue eyes as she pushed her stroller forward so I could take a look at her baby. Thinking back, I can’t remember what I said. I hope it didn’t show the shock and concern in my heart.

There are still days when I question what I’m doing. I wonder if I made the right choice all those years ago. Maybe I should have gone to law school, or taken a shot at writing. I’ll teach until it isn’t fun anymore, I remember telling myself. And then what? Teaching is my dream job for a multitude of reasons…but mainly because when I’m feeling sad, or thinking I cannot teach that novel one.more.time., something like this happens and makes me remember it’s all worth it. I’m sure lawyers don’t get notes like this.

This post was inspired by the novel The Divorce Papers by Susan Rieger. Young lawyer Sophie unwillingly takes her first divorce case with an entertaining and volatile client in this novel told mostly through letters and legal missives. Join From Left to Write on March 18 we discuss The Divorce Papers. As a member, I received a copy of the book for review purposes.

Jennifer Wolfe

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Sharing My Tears, Again: A Reflection on the Arapahoe High School Shooting

Posted on December 14, 2013 by Jennifer Wolfe

The news came the same way I’ve heard about all the other horrors in my generation – by email. Sitting at my desk, watching my 8th grade students joyfully read folktales and discuss the humor, the trickery, and the cultures contained in the storybooks before them, I gasped in horror. You’d think, from listening to the news reports, that I wouldn’t be surprised by another school shooting. But you see, as a teacher and mom, I am. I’m still shocked and devastated, brought to tears, whenever I hear of a person with a gun in their hands firing indiscriminately at innocent people.

Last year, on the day of the Sandy Hook shooting, I shared my tears with my teenage daughter as we drove through the Sierras, hands clasped. Somehow I never imagined that parenting would be so hard, that I would have to explain the callous behaviors of someone her age against 26 innocent young children. We talked about how the Newtown shooting might motivate our lawmakers towards tightening legislation for gun control and universal background checks. But through it all, I couldn’t stop the tears. They flowed freely that day, and for weeks afterwards, every time I thought about the grieving parents and the eulogy they had to compose for their child.

In the hours following yesterday’s Arapahoe High School shooting, I couldn’t help but follow the news reports. I felt an overwhelming urge to understand, to process, to figure out not only how this could happen, but why. And what did I find? News reporters leading with the words “this time” and “only one injured”. What have we become? How can we as a society be so numbed to this horrific event that we celebrate that ‘only one’ has been injured? How can we remark with such seeming indifference that it has happened again? I feel my tears flowing. Again.

And it’s not just for the parents, the children, and the families that I weep. It’s for me. It’s for my colleagues, my students, my school, and my own precious children. Every day I walk into a classroom filled to the brim with promise. Sometimes, it’s the hardest job I could ever imagine. Sometimes I need to have hard conversations with children and parents, and sometimes I know kids need to fail and hit bottom before they find their way back to the top. Sometimes I have interactions with parents and kids who think things should be different, who think that they should always earn an A and I’m being unfair. Sometimes, it makes me want to quit.

And then I hear that a child, upset with a teacher, brazenly comes back to their school to take matters into their own hands. And I wonder if that could happen at my school, to my staff, to my students. To me. And the tears start to flow, again.

I shouldn’t have to be thinking about how I would protect myself or my students; I find myself running through scenarios in my mind, processing how I would deal with the announcement of a shooter on campus. I shouldn’t have to be thinking about why Congress has halted universal background checks, or why 12 states have loosened gun control laws. I shouldn’t have to think about why three Colorado lawmakers have left office this year from lack of support for gun control.

I shouldn’t have to think about leaving a job I love because I know any day it could happen anywhere – not just in Colorado, but in California, or Connecticut. Or that in 2013 alone, 21 American schools have had to directly think about the aftermath of a school shooting.

And I shouldn’t have to share my tears, again, as I hug my children just a little bit closer tonight.