Adteacher

College students are making their way back to school in faraway lands. CalArts , SCAD , Michigan, etc., all across the country. I have had many very nice conversations recently with students who are making their way to college for the first time as well as some who are going back. One thing remains consistent - the joy that I feel knowing that they care enough to come back to high school to visit their old teacher. I feel so lucky to have a neat bunch of college grads as well as current college students. I try to stay informed about what life is like for each one of them, but I have lost touch with a few. I hope that life is treating them well and that they felt well prepared for the challenges that college life presented them with. Sometimes life is funny, and I get included on some of their great conversations. Today there were 4 alumni here after school along with about 4 or 5 of our current students, just hanging out in the studio with me and enjoying the time together. I got a c...

I should have gone home long ago. LONG ago. There's no air conditioning right now in the studio and it's after 8 PM... But here I sit at my desk at CCE, looking at the photography of recent DJCC graduate, Cason Hallock. I can't seem to pull myself away. Cason has recently been taking photos with his new macro lens, and they are jawdropping. I have been mesmerized for the past 30 min., and I have so much other work to get done, but Cason's gorgeous photos have taken their toll on my time management! I am so lucky to get to work with such talented artists who are so generous with their work. I will be printing several of Cason's recent photos to add to the rapidly developing collection that is going up in the CCE studio. Cason is such a humble young man, but he has a real talent behind the lens and I hope that he will go on to pursue the field of photography with a vengeance. I can tell that he loves it, and he is doing such great things with his Nikon. Keep on shooti...

Mohandas K. Gandhi (1869-1948) I suppose leadership at one time meant muscles, but today it means getting along with people.--Gandhi I am pretty sure that Gandhi had a lot of things right. His opinion on leadership is surely correct, and it cannot be stated clearly enough. The importance of being capable of being a team player and getting along well with the people you work in close contact with is one of the surest ways of becoming a success. To become a good leader, you will need to know when to use a certain leadership style for a given situation. Authoritative style: This style should be used when you wish to persuade those that follow you to carry out a specific task. A leader who uses the authoritative method is telling their followers to "join them." This is a style of leadership which will convey a great deal of confidence. Coercive method:  When a leader uses this style, they are telling their followers to "do as I say, not as I do." This style i...

I was just posting on the new class site, ccedesign.blogspot.com and I realized what a great day it had been for a Monday... It is really something else around here. We have an explosively talented group of young advanced students mixed into the afternoon group of beginning designers, and there are already 30 people in this room. It is very exciting to see the potential. It floats around this studio like a golden cloud of "wonderful" and I feel the presence of some amazing yet to be fulfilled possibilities. This year feels like it might be the strongest year yet, and I am slightly hesitant to predict such an outlandish thing... since I have loved so many of the years that I have taught in this district. But this year feels a little bit special. I have more really good photographers this year than I can ever remember having before. I am looking at their work on flickr and other portfolio sites, and WOW! Just wow. I am also proud of Mallory Strong for being a featured ph...

To introduce everyone to the new place, I am planning to open the studio for coffee at 7:30 PM on Thursday evening, Sept. 23rd. If you are curious, and you want to join our new LISD Ad Design/Graphic Design/Illustration alumni group and help us come up with a less ponderous name for it, stop in for a cuppa Joe and perhaps some cookies? Not that I'm trying to bribe you to be a part of our alumni group, but hey, it's cookies and coffee. We would like to stay in touch with our alumni in a big way. We want to know what's cooking with you guys and to also have you be a part of what we will be doing in the future. So if your curiosity is up, come by our new school and see what we are doing. There's a map on this link. http://cce.lisd.net/location/index.htm  I hope to also introduce to you our new teacher at Dale Jackson, Evan Cranston. I think you will all be very impressed with him too. What a guy. I know a lot of alumni have moved far, far away from Lewisville and won...

At 4:20 every afternoon, a train comes by the new Career Center East on a track that is located right past the faculty parking lot. I can look down from my studio window and see it go by every day. It kind of reminds me of a few things and makes me think when I watch it go past. Although I have changed locations recently, and the studio is different and the students are new this semester (except for 11 advanced students whom I have already worked with) we still have the "feel" of the studio the way it has always been. We work hard and we have high expectations, at this time of year especially. Everything that we are going to accomplish is ahead of us, kind of like the track that lies ahead of this train... THE TRAIN OF LIFE Some folks ride the train of life looking out the rear, Watching miles of life roll by and marking every year. They sit in sad remembrance of wasted days gone by, And curse their life for what it was and hang their head and cry. But I don't concer...

We may not have two cats in the yard, but it is a great place nonetheless! I have to say, we are quite satisfied with our new home at CCE. The architects of the building just gave us a nice ice cream party to welcome us to the new building and it was Ben and Jerry's all the way, with toppings and the works! We feel very special here at the Career Center East, and very blessed to be in our new classrooms and studios and labs with our great LISD students. Photos of the new studio are going to start appearing on this blog regularly now, and as soon as I get a chance to get across town to DJCC to show you what Mr. Cranston's take on that studio is, I will share that with you as well. Our classes at CCE are very full. The PM class has 30 students, and the AM class has 24. Mr. Cranston is teaching animation this semester, but next semester he will have a graphic design class as well... so be watching for that! I am very excited by the fact that we are offering graphic design, anima...