Archive for the ‘teaching’ Category

…that as of Friday at 3:40 PM, I now have 26 remaining sets of reports card to do and I CAN RETIRE!!! I tried looking at some type of countdown that would seem reasonable and now feel like an eternity. 1440 school days (at that time) wasn’t workin’ for me. Seven years wasn’t workin’, and neither was number of weeks. What did seem to catch on was the number of report periods for which I would need to do grades (how’s that from the Grammar Queen?). That was eminently do-able. So – 26 more sets of report cards.

The big question is whether I can last physically and mentally – my principal actually admitted that we have too much to do, and he needs to ease things for us. Ya think? And another question is whether or not I will go back there next year. I really need to explore some new options.

That said, I am now on vacation! For two weeks I can sleep late, not do school work, and just work on art. So I started by uploading my Contribute which arrived in the mail. Five hours later I was finally able to upload pics for Suzan to see. I had to call Adobe because evidently I was “missing” something for the download, which I got, and then had to figure out how to install. I had to all Suzan because I couldn’t seem to remember coding and passwords I had used for three years….but now we should be able to get back to Photoshop Tag and create more work. As long as the weather cooperates, we’re headed to Phoenix to meet half-way next Thursday. Yay!

(Tongue in cheek….)
One of the things I do really well, and have as long as I have been teaching, is organize events, large and small. We were talking at dinner, and I was saying that most of the teachers are going to be surprised at the art show and its organization. Yet this is the kind of thing I do – and love doing – plan all the nitty gritty details for an activity. So the panels are ordered, invitations are out for the kids, need to do invitations in mailboxes next week, invite central office people and Utterback staff, get artwork organized, and so on.

April 28 of next year will be the 35th anniversary of World Peace Day, an activity my Pacific and Asian Affairs Club organized in 1972. We had a state-wide day devoted to recognizing and working for peace. Brings back lots of memories – the 9 mile Walk for Peace, where I could barely move the next day, being following, trying to get a parade permit from the mayor – a great nine months of planning. I love doing this stuff!

Wednesdays are always busy, since we see all the kids for shorter periods. I was late getting to work, and it seems that no matter how hard I clean, the room is still a mess. Hopefully that will improve when I get into the art room – and I don’t have to have supplies strewn around my room. The kids really got into making the holiday wreaths, and of course I have tissue paper from one end of the room to the other.

I don’t remember how I first learned to make those wreaths, but I know I was making them my first year in college – so that puts it at 40 years – eeekkk. I used to do them with candy stuck into styrofoam with pins – that sure wouldn’t work in today’s world. The tissue paper is cheap, and the kids seem to enjoy them. There are more kids who want to do t-shirts with their art work, as a result of seeing the ones I ran off yesterday. They need to bring a dollar, plus a clean t-shirt, and on Monday and Tuesday we’ll iron transfers.

I got so tired during 6th period that I kept having to sit down – I was pooped – Wednesdays tend to do that. But all in all a good day with the kids.

We have finally gone and done it – after about three years of talking about doing digital art from the marbled fabric, we have entered our first show. The Los Angeles Center for Digital Art has a deadline of December 5, and yesterday Suzan sent out the entry. I think the three photos are exceptional. I will post them once judging is done and we know what happens. It is nice to see that shows are taking digital entries instead of slides – which is to be expected if it’s a digital show….duh…..But too often still for fiber shows especially you have to have slides, which means a roll of film and hoping you get a couple of good ones.

When we lived on San Andreas we would nail black fabric to the outside workshop wall and photograph outside, several pictures per piece and hope they worked. Digital is so much easier, and we can retake any time we want. I still have my old slide projector which I got for Christmas in 1974-ish, but Kodak no longer makes bulbs for them. With all the stuff I used to do for school, a slide projector gave me a lot of flexibility. No longer – in fact, most people don’t even remember those huge opaque projectors we would use to show pictures from books to kids. And the mimeo smell….and all the crosswords done on stencils and dittoes – goes waaayyyyy back to “ancient” days of teaching – the 70’s.

And I think about how hard it would be to teach without my Powerpoint and Promethean board…..I need to get Dean’s slides of Champlain graduation put onto disk…….