Presented to Jennifer Long
I am pleased to present the 2023 Nebraska Writing Project Carol MacDaniels Teacher of the Year Award to Jennifer Long.
Jennifer Long currently serves as English Department Chair and Instructional Coach at Gretna High School, where she has taught for approaching two decades. Jenny has been a leader in Nebraska Writing Project since her first Summer Institute back in 2012. Since 2016, she’s facilitated the Gretna Embedded Institute most every year, providing Gretna teachers with their first NeWP experience. She has served on the NeWP Advisory Board since 2015 and as Co-Director 2017-2021. She facilitated both Summer and Advanced Institutes, organized the Eastern Youth Writing Festivals, and taught repeatedly for our Young Writers Camp. A teaching colleague at Gretna says about her: “Jenny Long is a teacher leader who inspires her students and colleagues to meet the unique challenges of the moment every day with curiosity, intensity, and originality.” This inspiration shines through the many comments I received in support of this award.
Jennifer Long exemplifies the three traits we honor with this award: great teaching, ongoing advocacy for teachers, and strong personal writing.
Jenny Long’s students at Gretna, current and past, describe a teacher who inspires them to reach into themselves and to connect outward with others. As one former student put it, “I had the privilege of having Mrs. Long during my junior year and she was the BEST.” Another former student articulated how, for her, Mrs. Long’s teaching worked:
Mrs. Long not only understood me as a student but also as a human being. One who needs meditation breaks, a good coloring page, and the occasional five-minute line-dancing party before conquering the archaic language of the Scarlet Letter. Not only has Mrs. Long educated me on the topics from your typical high school English class rubric, but also on topics from the rubric of life. Those topics include self-confidence and how to use one’s voice to express their opinion, and that’s exactly what I did in class.
This student’s personal experience in Jenny’s class was transformative, but several other students drew attention to her widespread effect on classmates. One wrote:
I enjoyed her creative writing class so much I enrolled in it nearly every semester. This experience was not unique to me: Jenny has a way of making everyone who walks into her classroom feel safe and loved and excited about language. Students of all personalities, from star athlete to quiet academic, discover power in their pen in Jenny’s class. And we are all comfortable learning about ourselves because Jenny makes us feel that way. By sharing her writing, she pulls back the curtain, reminding us that honest words are the most powerful and often, the most healing.
Jenny’s impact isn’t limited to creative writing. Part of her mission is to take the idea of “honest words are most powerful” and make it real. A counselor colleague at Gretna writes:
I am not sure if Jenny started the advocacy project in the senior English Composition II classes or if she just continues to be the engine that drives it. It is a project where seniors must become advocates for a cause in which they are passionate. It is about producing work that the entire community can consume, not just the teacher. They learn how to make their voices heard and campaign for change. They gain invaluable skills of advocacy and communication. It is the perfect capstone project for seniors about to graduate and go out into the world.
This theme of advocacy applies to Jenny’s teaching colleagues as well as her students. Through her work at Embedded Institute facilitator, department chair, and now instructional coach, Jenny Long serves as a direct advocate for her teaching colleagues. One colleague calls her simply “a listening ear, a problem solver, and an advocate for both staff and students.” Another colleague describes the mentoring program Jenny instituted as department chair:
Jenny’s coaching program is designed to keep effective teachers in the profession, and she is successful. The English Department at GHS has several young teachers, and they have all stayed and lean on not only Jenny’s leadership but also the strategies that she has developed with them and the conversations and feedback she has provided.
A final colleague went for breadth, trying to sum up in one sentence the scope of her impact. He writes:
Whether it is her helping to adapt a script for our perennial State Championship One Act program, guiding the Gretna Writing Project for Gretna staff, aiding colleagues to attain better mental health through her Tranquility Tuesday program, or assisting others to improve and incorporate better writing skills within the local context of Gretna schools, it is hard to find someone who does more for GHS and Gretna Public Schools in so many different ways than Jen Long.
Of course, as all Nebraska Writing Project teachers know, the ability to inspire and advocate for others starts with knowing yourself as writer. Jenny’s student quoted above refers to this, noting how powerful it was when Jenny shared her own “honest words.” Jenny has been writing and sharing poetry for nearly three decades. I’d like to close this tribute by reading a short poem by Jenny Long, one she selected for this purpose.
Advice for a Bad Day
By Jennifer Long
1. Is there any chance you can get to a baby?
Find one - preferably one you know -
and press your cheek against
the milk sweet wonder of theirs.
Breathe.
2. Never underestimate the power of eating cheesecake in the bathtub.
3. Unapologetically lay down.
Have a lie in.
Put your head on pile of towels
fresh from the dryer and
cover yourself in velvet or flannel or
your dad’s ratty college sweatshirt.
Watch nothing through an old window
or study the universe inside your eyelids.
It doesn’t have to mean
anything.
4. Remember:
We are the only animals on this planet
worrying about our weight
our credit score
our credentials
lawn care.
Be a fox. Be a falcon.
Be a werewolf in a storm
and watch your enemies
cower while you change.
5. Stare at yourself in the mirror.
Watch your reflection with wonder, asking:
Whose mouth is this? Whose soft brow?
See centuries of grandmothers
freckled across your nose.
6. Look further. Farther.
Whose great, great grandmother are you?
Live the story they will whisper
with reverence at their altars,
your name
an offering to their daughters.
Be a force that rolls like thunderheads through their bones.
Please join me in honoring Jennifer Long as the 2023 Nebraska Writing Project Carol MacDaniels Teacher of the Year!
Robert Brooke
1994-2023 Director of NeWP