Adteacher

It seems like it would be hard to learn something new at the relatively advanced age of (almost) 53. I will reach that milestone next month, and I am just flooded with new things to learn all the time. I read one time that most of the reading you do before the age of 30 is to learn new things, that most of the reading you do between 30 and 50 is application of things you should already know, and after 50 you should read for pleasure and not so much to learn new things. Well... Until they put me in a box six feet under ground, I have a feeling that I will still be learning how to do something new. Give me a toy to play with and I am on it! For example, if you put art supplies in front of me, I want to learn a new technique. If you give me a new lens for a camera, I want to learn how it works and shoot with it for days. If you give me a musical instrument, I want to learn to play it - although I have given up on many because some of them are really hard to learn! If new software ...

You know, I've been a teacher and I have been other things in my life too. I like teacher. Here is why. Teaching is really very multi-dimensional. There is not any "one correct way" to do the job. Every teacher seems to have their own style and sometimes they become quite noted for it. Great teachers teach students how to learn in many different ways. The best teachers I know of take charge of a subject (or subjects) in education and figure out a way to make them relevant and meaningful to their students. Successful teachers can motivate people, and some of the ones that I really admire are the ones that can figure out a way to be memorable in some way. It might be something as small as the way they greet their class in the morning. It may be that they are memorable for using humor as a teaching aid. My own personal favorite teachers were the ones who were caring. You could see it in their smile a lot of times. I remember an older teacher I once ha...

I have been trying to sleep and I'm afraid that I have so much on my mind that sleep is eluding me. I figure that if I dump some thoughts on this page that it might make room for some zzzz's. Today was full of so much activity and I still did not get everything done that needed to be done. It is always busy at this time of year, but this year feels doubly frantic due to the fact that I am essentially on two faculties now. I am going to faculty meetings for the new career center and of course, I am still fully involved in typical springtime activities at DJCC. I have had a constant influx of requests for work from multiple sources, and it feels like I am helping a lot of people with a lot of projects. The students are doing their best to help out too, but it is amazing how much is falling on me, personally, right now. It isn't really stress, but it is about two notches busier than I have ever been before. It is hectic. It is only when I have a lot on my mind that I end...

For the second year running, DJCC has a junior student who has been accepted into the SCAD "Rising Star" program, and she is our principal's daughter, Mallory Strong. Mallory is highly motivated in especially the areas of photography and fashion and she looks forward to expanding her experiences this summer at SCAD. She will bring her knowledge back to share with her class during her senior year next fall. Great job Mallory! Last summer, senior student Ryan Brownhill blazed the trail in Savannah by attending five weeks of classes taught by SCAD faculty and earned an A for each of the classes he took. This has resulted in automatic acceptance into SCAD as well as a later offer of $18,000 per year scholarship offer. We should know this week if Ryan will accept that offer or one of many others he has received. DJCC students continue the tradition of excellence, and continue to inspire me and each other every day. Now for a completely different topic. CAKE. I have a birthd...

I've had jobs. I've got a career. Let me tell you what the difference between a job and a career is from my own personal perspective. When I was 15 years old, I was lucky enough to get my first "job". I worked as a nursery attendant and my task was to monitor the hygiene of the little babies and toddlers. In other words, if a diaper got "poopy and droopy", I changed it. If a nose got runny, I wiped it. If a pair of little hands got sticky after snacktime, I wiped them off. If a kid had any kind of cleanliness issue, it was my job to watch for it and take care of it. I guess I was pretty good at it, because the next summer I got hired again by the same people, but this time I was a playground supervisor. I got to wear a whistle around my neck and conduct kickball games with the older kids there, and I got to head up the "arts and crafts" and help them learn to play board games if it was rainy and the kids couldn't play outside in the sunshine. ...

Princeton University defines "mindset" as a habitual or characteristic mental attitude that determines how you will interpret and respond to situations. One thing that I have learned in my life is that mindset is everything . Once you begin to dread something and you develop fear about a situation, it becomes much easier for the experience to play out the way that you have it in your mind because you lose confidence in your ABILITY to make the experience play out in a positive way. I have seen professionals and students make the mistake of believing their own bad publicity. They broadcast ahead of the result what their greatest feared outcome is, and then they cause themselves to fulfill it. Rather than approaching a day filled with trepidation with the attitude that they can overcome their fears, they have learned to go ahead and do exactly what it is that they know will lead to their failure. How unwilling we can be to learn from our own experiences. So how ...