It's been so hard to keep with with the ol' blog since school started. Teaching, studenting, social chairing, reading, writing, cooking, cleaning, whew. All these necessary distractions make Mr. Sisk a bad blogger.
Regardless of my neglectfulness, I do occasionally snatch a second to post a pithy post that some of you read and a few comment on, for which I am truly thankful. It's nice to know my words are not swallowed up by the cyber void.
Since Thanksgiving is just around the corner, and I'm going to be busy student conferencing and then trans-Tennessee driving until then, I'm stealing a moment to share what I am most thankful for this holiday season. It's important that we remember to be thankful, I think, and especially, it's important for me to be grateful for those people who have loved me enough to sacrifice their time, money, energy, and desires to get me where I am today. Here's my list, then:
1. My family--Momma, Daddy, Muffy, Pippi, Jeffrey, Lily, and everybody else who has loved me and said prayers for me and worried about me and been proud of me. A large part of what I do, I do for you.
2. My friends, past and present. Even though I've lost touch with some of the best buddies I had at Central Arkansas, I still think of them and I'm glad I've known them. They have helped make me who I am. As for the friends of Thanksgiving Present--Eric, Virginia, Charlotte, Josh, Leah, and everybody else--I love you, I'm thankful for you. I couldn't do it without you.
3. My students, bless their hearts. I am sincerely grateful for each and every one of them. They have made me kinder, stronger, better.
4. Teachers--all of them--but especially mine, past and present. The true rock stars are educators. I've said that forever, even before I was one, and I stand by that statement even firmer now. I'm thankful for men and women who sacrifice their time and energy to make kids like me better human beings.
5. Six months, same as cash and/or interest-free financing options. Because when it rains, it pours, and the truest example of adulthood, I think, is resigning oneself to paying for things oneself, even if paying for it a little each month is the only option.
6. Change
7. Travel coffee mugs
8. Not burning the first batch of cookies (finally!)
What are you thankful for?
Monday, November 24, 2008
Thursday, November 13, 2008
Note on the Fridge to Nearly Every Teacher I've Ever Had
Esteemed women and men, I do not envy your position as the end of the semester looms near like a shadow in the night. I once underestimated your ability to do everything--EVERYTHING--perfectly as our time together drew to a close. "It shouldn't take him that long to grade our papers," I thought. "She should have been more prepared for that class."
And you should have been. All of you. But how could you with all you had on your plates? Papers to grade, lessons to plan, dinners to cook, families to love, mental health to maintain. When I look at the sinkful of dirty dishes, the stacks of overdue library books and ungraded essays that have taken over my living space I can do more than imagine what your homes looks like every November. I'm living your lives now, dear teachers.
Late nights and early mornings, slacks worn for the fourth time without washing, unkempt hair, pots and pots of coffee, little more to eat than meat-and-bread sandwiches and bags of M & Ms. This is our life come end of the semester. This is what teaching entails. We embody it.
Thank you, teachers, for all the work you did for me and all the work you continue to do. You don't hear those words much, usually you only hear complaints from grade grubbers, but I hope you'll hear it from me, a once-and-future grade grubbing student, a currently overwhelmed teacher.
You are all amazing.
Sincerely,
Timothy J. Sisk
Friday, October 24, 2008
Doing It Right for a Change
Y'all, I'm published! Okay, so it's an online publication, but it's still all mine. I would like to thank Dr. Stephanie Vanderslice for letting me know about the publishing opportunity with Splinter Generation. Read my poem and let me know what you think!
In other news, I'm coming down with the funk from running myself ragged with the course work and the teaching and the socializing. Snotty nose and sore throat makes Tim a sad boy. But not so sad that I didn't go out with a whole slough of folks for cheap Mexican food and half-priced Dos Equis pitchers tonight. I mean, I had to eat, right? Plus, it's against my religion to stay in on a Friday night. I have people to love on, y'all.
In the long absence since my last post, I've been busy, busy, busy: writing poems and short stories, reading about campy performance art, teaching argumentative writing to somewhat resistant-but-still-utterly-adorable college freshpeople. Spending too much time loving on friends. I'm living the dream, and I hate to think that it's going to end in six months. Here's to making it the best six months yet.
I'm on my way to bed for some much needed recuperation, but I'll share a completely endearing teacher story with you before I go:
A student confided to me in an individual conference before fall break that he felt he "just wasn't doing this college thing right." "I just don't have any friends, Mr. Sisk," he said. "I don't think I want to come back after Fall Break." His admission struck me as odd since he is one of the chattier boys in his class. In fact, I had planned to tell him he should stop talking so much in class, but my heart just melted. I couldn't scold him. I couldn't let him give up on college, especially since he tries so hard and does good work in my class. I told him that I noticed he'd been getting along with a boy he sits beside in my class, that from my end of things they looked like pretty good friends. "Ask him to go to the football game with you or go to church with him," I said, doing my best to speak to him in his language. I know his language. Well, last week I decided to hold class outside under a tree since the day was lovely and our reading dealt with defining a sense of place. Both classes did a wonderful job discussing the text (I was so proud!), and at the end of the class with the aforementioned student, he came up to ask me a question about an assignment. I noticed that the boy I told him he should consider his friend stood a few feet back waiting on him to finish talking to me. Then they walked across the quad together talking about things that 18-year-old boys talk about. I was so damned proud so see these friends interact, to know that maybe this boy no knows he is doing this college thing right. It was one of the best kinds of teaching moments, and I hope I remember it forever.
It sounds so cheesy, but I don't care: being a teacher is my favorite thing about my life. And I've got a pretty good life full of lots of great things.
Happy weekend, y'all!
In other news, I'm coming down with the funk from running myself ragged with the course work and the teaching and the socializing. Snotty nose and sore throat makes Tim a sad boy. But not so sad that I didn't go out with a whole slough of folks for cheap Mexican food and half-priced Dos Equis pitchers tonight. I mean, I had to eat, right? Plus, it's against my religion to stay in on a Friday night. I have people to love on, y'all.
In the long absence since my last post, I've been busy, busy, busy: writing poems and short stories, reading about campy performance art, teaching argumentative writing to somewhat resistant-but-still-utterly-adorable college freshpeople. Spending too much time loving on friends. I'm living the dream, and I hate to think that it's going to end in six months. Here's to making it the best six months yet.
I'm on my way to bed for some much needed recuperation, but I'll share a completely endearing teacher story with you before I go:
A student confided to me in an individual conference before fall break that he felt he "just wasn't doing this college thing right." "I just don't have any friends, Mr. Sisk," he said. "I don't think I want to come back after Fall Break." His admission struck me as odd since he is one of the chattier boys in his class. In fact, I had planned to tell him he should stop talking so much in class, but my heart just melted. I couldn't scold him. I couldn't let him give up on college, especially since he tries so hard and does good work in my class. I told him that I noticed he'd been getting along with a boy he sits beside in my class, that from my end of things they looked like pretty good friends. "Ask him to go to the football game with you or go to church with him," I said, doing my best to speak to him in his language. I know his language. Well, last week I decided to hold class outside under a tree since the day was lovely and our reading dealt with defining a sense of place. Both classes did a wonderful job discussing the text (I was so proud!), and at the end of the class with the aforementioned student, he came up to ask me a question about an assignment. I noticed that the boy I told him he should consider his friend stood a few feet back waiting on him to finish talking to me. Then they walked across the quad together talking about things that 18-year-old boys talk about. I was so damned proud so see these friends interact, to know that maybe this boy no knows he is doing this college thing right. It was one of the best kinds of teaching moments, and I hope I remember it forever.
It sounds so cheesy, but I don't care: being a teacher is my favorite thing about my life. And I've got a pretty good life full of lots of great things.
Happy weekend, y'all!
Tuesday, October 14, 2008
Something for the critical intro
And Now
And now as you read these poems
--you whose eyes and hands I love
--you whose mouth and eyes I love
--you whose words and minds I love--
don't think I was trying to state a case
or construct a scenery:
I tried to listen to
the public voice of our time
tried to survey our public space
as best I could
--tried to remember and stay
faithful to details, note
precisely how the air moved
and where the clock's hands stood
and who was in charge of definitions
and who stood by receiving them
when the name of compassion
was changed to the name of guilt
when to feel with a human stranger
was declared obsolete.
1994
--Adrienne Rich, Dark Fields of the Republic: Poems 1991-1995
Sunday, October 12, 2008
My Mother's Small Portions
I am frivolous, and I resent the fact that I am. This early afternoon, as I was contemplating ways to make a box of macaroni and cheese stretch as far as it possibly could, I thought of my mother, the meals she used to cook for my brother and me, how filling they were, how completely unfrivolous she has always been. Mama used to stretch a box of dollar store mac and cheese into a full meal on a regular basis when Jeffrey and I were little boys. Boiled elbow noodles and powdered cheese sauce mixed with chopped hot dog or browned and drained ground beef, a can of mixed vegetables. Dinner was served, and god, was it filling. We were never hungry little boys.
Thursday nights we always ate canned chili and store brand hot dogs, red and boiled, on light bread and Fritos. In the winter, lots of beef stew and peanut butter sandwich dinners, pinto beans and corn bread. Skillets of fried Spam and potatoes. I never ate anywhere besides home and my grandmothers' houses, and they ate like we did. I thought everyone did.
I was shocked this weekend spent at a cabin in Pigeon Forge with six of my closest friends when I saw the food they all brought. Ashley and his salmon fillets, peeled and de-veined shrimp. Jeremy and his expensive cheeses, Parmesan not from a green sprinkle can. Virginia's wheel of brie. These things I'd never dream of buying.
Even when I can afford higher-end groceries, I often don't buy them. It's class guilt, I think. Experience has taught me that things like expensive food (or weekend cabin trips for that matter) are frivolous. Money is better spent elsewhere, like on unexpected doctor's visits and prescriptions. Last minute car repairs. And I'm the king of unexpected crises of those varieties. Every damn time I reach for the non-off brand whathaveyou at Kroger, I hear Mama's voice, the voices of my aunts and grandmothers, back and back and back, telling me to think, to plan, to save my pennies here to pay on the dollars I'll have to spend later. And I listen, do as I'm told, and I always seem to have the money for those unexpected things, though I worry that might change with the current state of the economy. But that's a different blog post.
The point is, I can't spend a dime of my hard earned money without toiling over it. I can't have a meal at a restaurant without calculating what sacrifices I'll have to make at home for the rest of the week to make up for exorbitant spending or buy a tank of gas without contemplating canceling my cable service. I know what my means are, and I hate living beyond them. That's the cardinal sin of salt of the earth, lower-middle class people, my people. So, I feel badly for going on a weekend getaway when I should be saving for the unexpected. When I remember how when I was little, Mama was always on a diet, because she was conscious of her weight, but also because she wanted to make sure her husband and two boys had enough to eat. I was raised on my mother's small portions, her practicality. I worry I'll never be as unfrivolous as she is.
Thursday nights we always ate canned chili and store brand hot dogs, red and boiled, on light bread and Fritos. In the winter, lots of beef stew and peanut butter sandwich dinners, pinto beans and corn bread. Skillets of fried Spam and potatoes. I never ate anywhere besides home and my grandmothers' houses, and they ate like we did. I thought everyone did.
I was shocked this weekend spent at a cabin in Pigeon Forge with six of my closest friends when I saw the food they all brought. Ashley and his salmon fillets, peeled and de-veined shrimp. Jeremy and his expensive cheeses, Parmesan not from a green sprinkle can. Virginia's wheel of brie. These things I'd never dream of buying.
Even when I can afford higher-end groceries, I often don't buy them. It's class guilt, I think. Experience has taught me that things like expensive food (or weekend cabin trips for that matter) are frivolous. Money is better spent elsewhere, like on unexpected doctor's visits and prescriptions. Last minute car repairs. And I'm the king of unexpected crises of those varieties. Every damn time I reach for the non-off brand whathaveyou at Kroger, I hear Mama's voice, the voices of my aunts and grandmothers, back and back and back, telling me to think, to plan, to save my pennies here to pay on the dollars I'll have to spend later. And I listen, do as I'm told, and I always seem to have the money for those unexpected things, though I worry that might change with the current state of the economy. But that's a different blog post.
The point is, I can't spend a dime of my hard earned money without toiling over it. I can't have a meal at a restaurant without calculating what sacrifices I'll have to make at home for the rest of the week to make up for exorbitant spending or buy a tank of gas without contemplating canceling my cable service. I know what my means are, and I hate living beyond them. That's the cardinal sin of salt of the earth, lower-middle class people, my people. So, I feel badly for going on a weekend getaway when I should be saving for the unexpected. When I remember how when I was little, Mama was always on a diet, because she was conscious of her weight, but also because she wanted to make sure her husband and two boys had enough to eat. I was raised on my mother's small portions, her practicality. I worry I'll never be as unfrivolous as she is.
Saturday, September 27, 2008
Notes from my Mental Health Day
I'm becoming schizophrenic, y'all. I forget who I'm supposed to be from time to time, start using my teacher voice with my peers in the creative workshops I'm taking, find myself laughing at my kids' inappropriate jokes (when I should be schooling them on how to be respectful college students). I was commenting on my classmates' memoir essays* for poetry workshop the other day, and I caught myself marking weak thesis statements, misplaced modifiers, poor paragraph development. That's probably not the best way to be a respectful classmate, is it? Well, teaching basic writing really informs the way I read writing. And the way I write. Don't mess with Tim/Mr. Sisk when it comes to transitions and topic sentences.
Today, I've decided to take a break from all the grading and teachering to focus on getting my thoughts in order. I'm calling it my Mental Health Day, a day in which I will not respond to student emails, I will not do lesson plans, and I will not read a blessed critical essay on poetry or drama for the classes I'm taking. That's why God invented Sundays, right?
I'm going to the Greek Festival with some friends and reading around in Gregory Maguire's Wicked for fun. I'm going to wipe down my kitchen counters and make some chicken cutlets. Then wipe the counters down again. And then I might work on revising some poems, or I might just read some of the poetry collections I've been picking up from book sales and the library that I haven't had time to do much more than skim. I'm expecting all of y'all to hold me accountable.
*Memoir essay: Use an experience from your life to situate yourself in a poem you like, thereby reading it autobiographically and getting inside the poet's head to better understand the lyrical decisions she made. That way you can understand how the rhythms, line length, form, etc., works in that poet's poem and import those strategies into your own poetics. It's a wonderful assignment, probably best for advanced writers (but, you know, it might be a good way to teach beginning writers how to engage with a poem). I chose "Practicing" by Marie Howe and wrote about my first kiss. The exercise was so helpful, I plan to do it with other poems as I work on the critical introduction to my chapbook.
Today, I've decided to take a break from all the grading and teachering to focus on getting my thoughts in order. I'm calling it my Mental Health Day, a day in which I will not respond to student emails, I will not do lesson plans, and I will not read a blessed critical essay on poetry or drama for the classes I'm taking. That's why God invented Sundays, right?
I'm going to the Greek Festival with some friends and reading around in Gregory Maguire's Wicked for fun. I'm going to wipe down my kitchen counters and make some chicken cutlets. Then wipe the counters down again. And then I might work on revising some poems, or I might just read some of the poetry collections I've been picking up from book sales and the library that I haven't had time to do much more than skim. I'm expecting all of y'all to hold me accountable.
*Memoir essay: Use an experience from your life to situate yourself in a poem you like, thereby reading it autobiographically and getting inside the poet's head to better understand the lyrical decisions she made. That way you can understand how the rhythms, line length, form, etc., works in that poet's poem and import those strategies into your own poetics. It's a wonderful assignment, probably best for advanced writers (but, you know, it might be a good way to teach beginning writers how to engage with a poem). I chose "Practicing" by Marie Howe and wrote about my first kiss. The exercise was so helpful, I plan to do it with other poems as I work on the critical introduction to my chapbook.
Sunday, September 21, 2008
In Absentia
Hot damn. I have a new respect for my teachers, especially the ones whose primary course evaluation method involves grading essays. If my kids ask me one more time when they are getting their papers back, I'm going to explode. This week, young ones. I'll get them to you this week.
Yes, this is why I've been absent. Because I'm a teacher, but I'm also still a student, and I have not yet found the balance among being Tim, Mr. Sisk, and Bookspaz the Blogger. So the ol' blog has taken a backseat to the drama theory I've been reading, the rhetorical analysis I've been teaching. Now, I'm snatching a minute while my clothes tumble and my coffee gets cold to get a bit of blogging done. Here goes.
I've applied, been accepted, and had a phone interview for the Southern Teachers Agency. This means when private and independent schools around the South start looking for English teachers, my very friendly placement counselor, Jay, will match me up with them for interviews with principals, and I might be employed next year. When I asked my thesis advisor to write me a letter of rec for this program, she rolled her eyes a bit. I shouldn't teach high school, she says. Then she proceeded to give me the name of the English Dept. Chair at the community college here in Knoxville. So, I'll apply there too, but I bet I won't have much luck. There's an academic glut in East Tennessee.
What I really want to do is work in a bakery for a year or so. I've always wanted to learn to decorate cakes, and baking is one of my Most Favorite Things To Do. It calms me. Focuses my attention on something so my mind won't scuttle around among the jostling thoughts of papers to grade, books to read, exams to prepare for, boys to stop myself from loving. There's one in Knoxville I adore. I might see if I can weasel my way into a position there this summer. We'll see.
I just don't want to be one of those aimless wanderers with a Master's degree in English. I want a job and and a dog and a two-bedroom apartment. That's why I'm making plans so soon.
In other news, the teaching is going well except for the fact that I'm never as good in my first class as I am in my second. Every MWF I leave the first group (or rather, they leave me since I teach back-to-back in the same classroom) feeling like those kids deserve a better teacher. But I'm what they've got, and I'll keep on trucking along. I'm still getting my land legs, y'all.
I've made up my mind to ride my bike to Panera Bread today and write a little. I haven't had time to write much of anything besides emails and paper comments this week, and I've got some poems I need to get out of my head. You all know the feeling.
I hope everyone is well. I hope you're all registered to vote. I hope you're all voting for Obama (one of my friend's students spelled his name, "O'Bama.") Love.
Yes, this is why I've been absent. Because I'm a teacher, but I'm also still a student, and I have not yet found the balance among being Tim, Mr. Sisk, and Bookspaz the Blogger. So the ol' blog has taken a backseat to the drama theory I've been reading, the rhetorical analysis I've been teaching. Now, I'm snatching a minute while my clothes tumble and my coffee gets cold to get a bit of blogging done. Here goes.
I've applied, been accepted, and had a phone interview for the Southern Teachers Agency. This means when private and independent schools around the South start looking for English teachers, my very friendly placement counselor, Jay, will match me up with them for interviews with principals, and I might be employed next year. When I asked my thesis advisor to write me a letter of rec for this program, she rolled her eyes a bit. I shouldn't teach high school, she says. Then she proceeded to give me the name of the English Dept. Chair at the community college here in Knoxville. So, I'll apply there too, but I bet I won't have much luck. There's an academic glut in East Tennessee.
What I really want to do is work in a bakery for a year or so. I've always wanted to learn to decorate cakes, and baking is one of my Most Favorite Things To Do. It calms me. Focuses my attention on something so my mind won't scuttle around among the jostling thoughts of papers to grade, books to read, exams to prepare for, boys to stop myself from loving. There's one in Knoxville I adore. I might see if I can weasel my way into a position there this summer. We'll see.
I just don't want to be one of those aimless wanderers with a Master's degree in English. I want a job and and a dog and a two-bedroom apartment. That's why I'm making plans so soon.
In other news, the teaching is going well except for the fact that I'm never as good in my first class as I am in my second. Every MWF I leave the first group (or rather, they leave me since I teach back-to-back in the same classroom) feeling like those kids deserve a better teacher. But I'm what they've got, and I'll keep on trucking along. I'm still getting my land legs, y'all.
I've made up my mind to ride my bike to Panera Bread today and write a little. I haven't had time to write much of anything besides emails and paper comments this week, and I've got some poems I need to get out of my head. You all know the feeling.
I hope everyone is well. I hope you're all registered to vote. I hope you're all voting for Obama (one of my friend's students spelled his name, "O'Bama.") Love.
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