Adteacher

In brief: 1. It is absolutely wonderful to get rid of stuff. I cleaned out a storage unit that I rent this morning and Goodwill is the distinct beneficiary. Why have I not purged myself of old junk a long time before now? 2. I love to play "Words with Friends" on the iPhone. I have made new acquaintances and have a fairly consistent 21 games going concurrently. (I am pretty good at Scrabble. Yet, the one guy I have not learned to defeat very often is my own son!) 3. I have decided to take a trip to the east coast again this summer. Maybe up to Canada too. Escaping Texas heat in July seems prudent. 4. It is fun to spend time with my daughter. She and I went shopping at Urban Outfitters and thrift shopping for awhile today, and we had a great expedition together. She is quite a gal. 5. My dogs are awesome. Marley just trotted in to give me a high five from the kitchen area where my son is frying chicken. That's devotion. 6. My lawn needs to be mowed. My laundry ...

It's Friday night and the duties of this week have wound down and it's now "me time". I am sitting here in a peaceful, quiet house in my favorite chair just listening to music playing on my iPod, and the playlist that is on right now is entitled simply "1972". All of the songs on that playlist were released that year. At that particular point in my life, I was just about at the beginning of my high school days, a soon to be freshman. I remember so clearly how different that year seemed than the year before. It seems that music was changing a little bit and some new sounds (that were much more electronically based and a little less purely acoustic) were beginning to find their way into the music that we were all listening to. Less emphasis on the classic 'three guitars and a drummer' theme, and more tendencies toward more experimentation. Bands with larger instrumentation, and most importantly - very strong, bold, and unique sounding vocalists. Eve...

Recently I have been taking on more and more projects to help people get some endeavors started with worthwhile youth oriented activities. I have had multiple requests from time to time that I have really liked, but I have simply been too busy to take them on. However, lately I have met some people who have sparked my interest to such an extent that I am going to make time to help them, even though this is the most active spring semester I have had in recent years... That brings me to the point of what I want to discuss today. How many of us really take the time to assist in our local community when presented with the opportunity? I have found several rewards in doing so: primarily, the personal satisfaction derived from helping those who are trying to help others. I spoke with an assistant principal recently at one of our local high schools who is trying to build a youth program for a particular segment of the student population to help them form good life skills and become bett...

So this morning the DJCC personnel are assisting at the different campuses and I am assigned to be a hallway monitor for entering students at Hebron HS. I am supposed to greet any students who arrive late for the TAKS testing and to assist them in finding their way back to Suite A to officially check into the school. They are not allowed to proceed back to the "innards" of the building where the testing is going on right now. So far, it seems that things are going swimmingly here, and very few people have even been past here other than custodians and a few seniors from student council who have been summarily dismissed. No seniors allowed today until after we leave Hebron HS! This school has been locked down to everyone not taking the test, and we are the main gatekeepers in the main hallway. So that gives me some time to blog. It is very unusual for me to have this type of time during the school day. I am usually interacting with students, but today I have been interacting ...

Testing is always unsettling for the students it seems. We had a very strange occurrence today with the morning students attending DJCC in the afternoon due to morning testing. It seemed that they had a lessened ability to sit and concentrate on their work, so I tried to allow them to do a little bit more relaxing during the class period than I normally would. They were working, but more of them were up walking around than usual. Even the ones who usually work all class period on a normal day, sometimes even through break time, seemed to need to be out of their seats and were a little bit restless. Of course, the seniors had the morning off, so they were really out of their "routine". One of my favorite quotes about routine is this one by Henry Van Dyke, the American Poet of the late 1800s and early 1900s: "As long as habit and routine dictate the pattern of living, new dimensions of the soul will not emerge." Sometimes it is a really good thing to set "routi...

So I was just planning on a normal Monday morning... had my travel mug filled with java and had eaten my breakfast, was feeling pretty peppy and ready to start the week. I walked into my studio and said hello to the first few students of the day (David and Jake) and went about getting ready for the arrival of the rest of the students. I was going to walk across the hallway to the front office and I didn't make it very far before someone from our district technology dept. had a delivery for me. I got a new external hard drive for my files - a 1 terrabyte external hard drive! That is fantastic! I will be able to store all of my DJCC history on there easily. That is just so nice. I had purchased two external hard drives on my own, so it is nice that the district provided one. After I high fived the Technology guy, I went on to go across and check my mailbox. I didn't have anything new in there, so I started on my way back to the studio and I was met by my supervisor, Mr. Holder....

It is Sunday night. For some people, it might be a time to dread the Monday that is filled with trepidation about work that is piled up and another week of school. For me, Sunday night is always a time to look forward to the day that I am going to get to have with the students. I guess that is part of the thing that I love so much about my job - working every day with the enthusiasm of young artists. Don't kid yourself, it is not 100% wonderful 100% of the time... we have our days... but, I get to see the creativity of developing art, design, photography and illustration students every day that I teach. Some days it is one or another of them who really stands apart. Other weeks we all struggle with something new. But every day we get to be creative. There is a lot to be said for that! I am not counting the days until summer, although I know that some of my senior students are. June brings graduation, and many of them have some very exciting college plans. It i...