A Quiet 2020 Blog Review

It's almost here, the end of 2020 which once held the optimism of this whole new decade, right? But what... what in the world happened? 

When 2020 held so much promise.

To be honest, 2020 feels like a decade all on it's own. I haven't written much here or elsewhere during the past twelve months, but it is what it is. 2020 has helped remind me to let go of things I can't control, and I control very little. 

I'm also done using capitalistic measures to quantify success. Instead of thinking that growth and profit are required indicators of success, I'm more interested in sustainability measures. So rather than looking at reads and site visits as indicators of accomplishment, I also want to consider writing I feel proud of or that helped build community. I know my words are reaching people, so I'm calling this year sustainably successful. 

I posted to this blog six times, but a few post from before this year continue to generate significant traffic, so I'll take some time to revisit those as well in this year review:

A few days ago I shared my publications for 2020. I appreciated the communities that developed around anthologies and was so honored to have CNF, poetry, and fiction anthologized this year. This post also has links to videos of my work and these are a first for me. Reading in public is not my favorite so creating recordings and participating in virtual readings and discussions were huge areas of growth for me. 

I also shared my year of reading which includes many great titles. I'll choose a favorite from each genre just for fun, and if you need more to read, check out last year's list of favorites. 

Fiction: Nickle Boys by Colson Whitehead
Nonfiction: Just Mercy by Bryan Stephenson
Poetry: OBIT by Victoria Change
Graphic Novel: Pilu of the Woods by Mai K. Nguyen
YA: Hearts Unbroken by Cynthia Leicht Smith

My annual culmination addresses still get visits and the addresses from 2017, 2018, and 2019 garnered reads this year, but the 2020 address got the most reads of all my posts this year. 

At the start of this year, I wrote about the one-year anniversary of our UTLA Strike for the schools our students deserve and about the night before the strike. The actions we took two years ago have kept teachers, students, and families safe during this year. Even though we are all anxious to get back to school in-person, our decision to stay home has saved lives. In case you still weren't sure: strikes work. 

In the face of white supremacy in 2017, I asked for help in this post and many readers returned to it in the face of white supremacy in 2020. 

At the start of the school year, I wrote again about the first day of school, and how this year would be the same and also very different. 

But my top post this year was originally published here in 2017 and captures the Nakada experience with incarceration during World War II. Seeing this as the top post for the year serves as motivation to keep revising Rice Paper Superheroes, my young adult novel about the Nakamura family's wartime experience. 

That's it. Thanks for reading along and wish y'all a safe, healthy, and happy new year. 

My Poor Deserted Blog...

How can I do a blog round up this year when I barely posted here?

Well, I posted once in June. Thank you for reading my culmination address to the class of 2018. It was my most read post of the year and the only post to make my most-read all-time list.

Then, I posted to the blog three times in the last two days. I had to get my favorite books and publishing summary for 2018 out there. Then, I had to tie together two ideas that have been on my mind for the past few months: Lynell George's Image/After: Los Angeles Outside the Frame and the upcoming UTLA strike.

If you kept up with this barrage of posts, thanks so much.

I had a few other blogs in drafts. I was going to write about teachers and gun-violence and the ridiculousness of arming teachers, but I didn't. I was going to write about my niece's journey to play division one basketball, but she got hurt, so I didn't pursue that either.

Laters, 2018, from Team Nakada-Gantt (and Jane). 

I did start editing the Breathe and Push column for Women Who Submit, an organization which supports women and non-binary writers submit their work into the world. A few posts that might have gone up here went there, so if you'd like to read any of those, you can find them on the Women Who Submit website.

2018 was a full year. I wrote about running my first marathon on Throwing Cookies and was able to get up to the Wellstone Center for Writers three times. My time and the space there has helped me bring three manuscripts to completion.

I will be looking for representation this year for Rice Paper Superheroes, a young adult novel that follows the Nakamura family from the Sawtelle Nihonmachi to Manzanar and back again.

Dispatches from a High School Feminist: Rising Up from Rural Oregon, is the high school memoir that will complete the Through Eyes Like Mine trilogy. I hope to release that this summer.

And finally, Waiting for the Other Shoe to Drop: One Family's Experience with Mental Illness has moved from poetry to prose and I will be looking for a publisher for that as well.

After a move in August from our Mar Vista condo to a Home in View Park, we are settling in and loving our new space and neighborhood. What is on the minds in this two-teacher household most is the upcoming UTLA strike. If you have followed this blog you know my commitment to public education. This work stoppage could turn the tide for our schools, not just here in LA, but in our nation. Let's hope our city demands that our district do the right thing and fund the schools our students deserve.

With that, 2018 moves today from the front window and into the rear-view mirror. Happy New Year, y'all.

Blog Round-Up for 2017

It's been quite a year, and I think most of us saw it coming. With the election of 2016 in the rear-view,  what could we expect but chaos and trauma, injustice and ignorance? There was plenty of all of that, but there were also doses of hope and many galvanized souls against a common enemy. I blogged about some of that despair and some of that hope. Thanks to all who read along. Here is 2017 in review.

This is my sixteenth post of the year on this blog, plus I posted another four on Throwing Cookies, so 20 posts for the year is four short of my goal, but not too bad.

Many of my blog posts are still about my life as a teacher, and my third most read blog post this year, "Still Learning..." was about a moment when I questioned the work I do. A special group

of students helped me remember why I love what I do. Many of these same students came to our ESA signing day and have come back to visit this winter after their first few months at college (four of them at Oregon!). Watching them come into their own as young adults is another reward of this profession.

My second most-read post came this summer, in the wake of white-supremacist actions. In "Help me, please," I asked for help explaining our world to my kids, my students, and my nieces and nephews.

"On the 75th Anniversary of the Executive Order 9066" I told the story of my father's family as they and so many other West Coast Japanese Americans were interned during World War II. These words and pictures captured a little of the toll this injustice had on the Nakadas.

These three posts have become the fourth, fifth, and sixth most read blogs ever and I appreciate all the reads and shares. And with 2017 behind us, lets hope for more justice and hope in the days to come.

2016 Blog Round-Up

The reason I teach: Sharpies. 

As I mentioned in my last post, I have been focusing these past few months on submitting my work out into the world. This has been an excellent challenge for me, but it means I have published fewer words here. Still, I managed to post 20 times this year. Although this is quite a bit less than last year's 33, if I'd gotten ambitious and finished the year with 12 posts for Christmas, I would have been close to the same. I didn't do that, and that's okay. Twenty posts for the year it is.

My third most read post this year was the last of my 10 posts to start the school year: Why I Keep Teaching. It's about Sharpies, and teaching, and why I keep doing this impossible work in an urban public school. Almost 200 people read this blog, and that's about the number of students I interact with every school day, so I appreciate this symmetry, and I enjoyed taking some time to write about my teaching practice.

One of my favorite books from 2015. 

In second, with just one more read, was my first post of the year: The Only Three Books I Loved This Year. My book blog for 2016 is forthcoming, but this was a much better reading year than last. This might have been because I engaged in a #ReadDiverseLit challenge, although I only wrote about three such books (even though I read more), I loved just about every book I read. Maybe my brain is finally recovering from baby-rearing, or maybe I just like books about marginalized people better than others.

But my most read blog, the post that actually ran on Shannon Colleary's popular blog The Woman Formerly Known as Beautiful, and on The Huffington Post, is my Culmination Address to the Class of 2016. I wrote this after the UCLA shooting that claimed the life of a professor on campus, and kept all of my eighth grade students and teachers in a lock-down on campus. It was the toughest day in my teaching career, and a day I will always remember. And delivering a culmination address was something I'd never had the opportunity to do before, so I thank Lily Parker, our Speech and Debate coach, for pushing me into this uncomfortable space.

Ah, the Class of 2016... a good one. 

I also wrote about my experience during Black History Month, which taught me so much about privilege and being an ally, and if I added the reads to this series together, it would have made my list, but then again so would my #ReadDiverseLit posts if I added those together, so I will leave it at that.

I have lots more to say. I'm not sure if I will say it all here this year. I think I will be posting quite a bit to start off 2017, but for now, 2016 is in the books.

It has not been an easy year, but I keep hearing the words of author Colson Whitehead, the National Book Award winning author of The Underground Railroad, in my head. This has been my mantra for the last few months and I will carry them, probably, forever.

"Be kind to everybody, make art, and fight the power." 

Yes. That is what I intend to do. Thanks for reading along with me, y'all, and happy New Year!

2014 Year In Review

Well, I was feeling pretty ambitious last year when I set the goal to post here once a week. It's what all the successful bloggers say: you have to post quality content regularly.

Last year I was able to do it. I posted over 50 times but most were part of the 52 poems project I was doing.

Mom... 

But I'm not beating myself up about only posting 20 times. It was a tough year full of change and new understandings of family and life and death.

Thanks to all of you for still reading along. I know I haven't been the most reliable, but your readership and feedback has helped me through some tough times this year.

So, here are the top three posts for 2014...

3: It has been a rough year to be an educator. Public education continues to be assaulted by a "reform movement" attempting to discredit and privatize our public schools. It's not all that different than it has been over the past ten years. But this year, with the rollout of national "Common Core" standards and their assessments, I have had to make more concessions than I'm comfortable with. Fortunately, many parents are beginning to voice their concerns over testing and standards. This post about opting out of testing was my third most popular this year. 

2: This post, Summer Stock, captures the time I'll remember most about 2014, even though I hoped fall would help me forget. This post captures the end of the school year, the loss of my mom, and the summer that followed.

1. This year I turned forty and rather than the huge challenge I first considered (a solo run at the Pole, Pedal, Paddle) I set out to celebrate least forty times. Happy birthday to me and a huge thanks to all who helped me ring in #40, and for making it my most-read post this year so I get to feel the birthday love all over again. Forty is fine and fabulous and lots of other f words my baby-brain is currently withholding from me. Here is my top post of the year: Forty is Starting to Look Pretty Amazing...

First Quarter Progress Report for 2014

A while back, poet Kima Jones asked on twitter about those new year's resolutions. She was calling me out. That woman is all about accountability and she gets it done. I needed to come clean. I started the year with an ambitious set of goals but now, as the first quarter closes I'm ready to check in with those goals and my progress.

Writing: Finish high school memoir draft (50,000 words) and revise YA novel: Rice Paper Superheroes.

Progress: Still drafting the high school memoir: 23,000 words. Not quite halfway there. I need to write, people

Reading: Read and write short annotations for 50 books in the year.

Progress: Doing ok on this one although I was ahead of the game at the start of March and am now behind. Still, I've finished 10 and am halfway through two more. I should be at 12  by now. Spring break should help me catch up.

Publishing: Submit work at least once a month and publish one blog post per week.

Progress: Only submitted one piece to CNF, close on the blogs. One, maybe two weeks behind. I need to get my work out there. This is the scary one for me, always, but it is one of those risks I have to make myself take.

Fitness: Run 500 miles in the year.

Progress: Just over 100 miles. I should be at 125.

So, my conclusion here at my quarterly progress report is this: I'm behind but I can still reach my goals.

I can do this.

Here we go.

2013 Year in Review

This picture has nothing to do with this post. It's just a funny shot of
Kiara reading Goodnight Bush and making a face about Dick Cheney.

Well, 2013 has been my most prolific year as a blogger with this being my 51st post. The 52 poems project definitely kept me going. I loved returning to a few of my favorite poets: Robert Frost, Pablo Neruda, and Lucille Clifton, but I also discovered how much I love other poets like Seamus Heaney, Richard Blanco, and Naomi Shihab Nye. My poetry posts were not so widely read, though. I don't know how much these stats really tell me. I mean, as of now, my Dukes of Hazzard excerpt is my all-time most read which just shows the power of the label in a search engine. Apparently more people search for 80s tv shows than for poems about forgetting and remembering life.

Still, these were the three posts which got the most hits in 2013. Thanks for reading along and here's to another year of reading, writing, blogging, and living.

Scout!

The third most visited post was titled Conception after a poem in Reflections of Motherhood. I decided to share this after we decided to try to grow our family again. No luck yet, but we're still hopeful!

The next most-read post was about the new year's wishes my students made and some wishes of my own. It surprises me that this was so widely read, but I'm glad for it and I do plan on writing more about my teaching and the state of public education this coming year.

But for 2013, the posts which resonated most was Love that Dog about our family's decision to re-home our dog. I still tear up reading it and still miss Scout. It was tough not hanging her stocking this holiday season and if anyone is in need of a dog stocking, let me know.

See you in 2014!

Back to School Wishes for 2013

We started the second semester today and after a restful winter break it was good to be back. I really enjoy my job and my students. So, to start class today we wrote some of our wishes for the new year. My students wrote about superpowers, season tickets on Hawaiian Airlines, and dates with Justin Bieber.

I wrote along with them, as I always do, and during third period I wished an anonymous donor would make-over our school giving us a turf field, a new gym, and clean classrooms with working heat and air conditioning. I reread this and felt so sad. This was not a wish. These basics are things our school should have right now.

I also wished that Obama would say, "Forget all this testing. Let's make learning fun again." But I don't need Obama to do that. Despite the number of days we are required to spend taking district and state mandated tests (about three weeks) I know my students and I are having fun and we're learning.

There is so much talk about testing and achievement in our schools. There is even more talk about reform and how our schools have to change. I've been an educator for over 15 years and despite the bleak picture many paint of public education in the US, I know in classrooms and schools everywhere, despite all of the noise, teachers are teaching, students are learning, and it's going to be a good year.