One week of school is "under our belt"!

We are glad to have high school underway, and we wish our
graduates all the best as they head off to college for another year.

We handled the first week of classes here at Career Center East just beautifully! I am always worried about the first week, because high school students tend to have a very hard time "readjusting" their night owl habits to start the school year again.

This year I have to compliment them.

They showed up alert and ready to go on the first day! It was quite different than many years. I am really impressed with their willingness to work hard too. I know that I threw a whole lot of new information at them during the past five days, and they were just great about keeping up with me. It seems right now that this year is full of strong potential.

As our school year gets underway, summer is still blazing its scorching heat down on us with 62 days over 100 degrees, continuing its seemingly unrelenting march toward the record of 69 days. (That is one record that none of us really care to break.) The attitudes here at CCE have been great, despite some really hot bus rides, a few difficult to resolve schedules, and some early morning and mid afternoon bouts of the sleepies on all our parts. I hope that next week is even better, and I couldn't ask for more enthusiasm from the students.

The classes are fabulously full, and as long as we don't have any computer problems, we are at our desired capacity at this point. The students are well underway with learning the software, and next week they will begin some project work. The advanced and practicum students are doing really well, all very mature self-directed learners. I am anxious to begin to do some one on one counseling with each of them to help them get their portfolios ready for the National Portfolio Day event in Dallas in early October.

This week on our Friday college talk, we discussed the costs of college as well as a specific school, Miami Ad School (http://www.adschool.edu/) I was excited to be able to introduce all of them to the website and to show them how to get more information about the programs that they offer. It's an extremely user-friendly site.

Next week will be the process of continuing to learn more about the students as people as well as acquainting these new students about the studio culture and making them understand how things operate on this campus. There is a "buzz" of excitement on the loft floor here at CCE, and I feel very good! This is a great time of the year.