Can you pay for this?

“I don’t have the money for a yearbook.”

“I can’t afford to buy professional clothes for the fieldtrip.”

“My folks can’t give me the money for a USB drive.”

“I’m going to have a baby.”

Huh?

More homecoming shenanigans

Although I do not dress up for homecoming, my partner in crime does.  Thursday was 80s day, and she went through her closet to come up with the appropriate attire.  Check it out to see what she wore.  Hey, you put this stuff on the web, it’s just gotta be shared.

Integrity, even when no one is looking

The teacher’s credit union has big red strip along the sidewalk which means NO STOPPING NO PARKING.  If a vehicle, especially a big SUV parks along there, it blocks the access and egress to the lot.  This morning, when I pull into the credit union lot, there sits a giant SUV, blocking the drive, parked next to the red strip, with his engine running.  I park, in the lot, and as I walk up to the ATM, there comes a teacher and coach from my school, back to the idling SUV.  

“Stu,”  I say, “I see the rules don’t apply to you.”

“Not when there isn’t any cop around to see,” says Stu as he jumps into his SUV and rumbles away.

And the guy gets upset when kids don’t follow the rules at school.

Crazy clothes day

Today was the first day of Homecoming Week and the theme was crazy socks day.  I didn’t wear any crazy socks, but when I came home, exhausted after working for two hours on faculty photos for the yearbook and still not done, I put my shirt on inside-out.  It was only when my husband came in from mowing the lawn did he point it out.  Oh well, by then I had been that way for over a half hour.  Why change.  Maybe that can be a theme day next year–wear everything inside out.

Timely presentation

The neighborhood Bank of America branch manager and a banker came to talk to my marketing seniors today.  They described many of BofA’s services and encouraged the kids to open checking accounts so as not to use check cashing services.  Most of my students have parents who use those.  

My students asked good questions and the bankers were very impressed with their quality.  I was very pleased with the behavior, questions, and comments of the kids.  I’m hoping they take the suggestions to heart.

A little knowledge

Our school, within the business department, has a Virtual Enterprise (VE) class.  It is a great class with skills that transfer to the real world.  Students learn how to operate an on-campus business, in our case the student store as well as a photo button business, and how to set up and operate an online business in the virtual world of other VE classes from all over the world.  Students in the class (all seniors) must apply for the positions within the company and the management applicants are interviewed by faculty members.  Those chosen for the management positions in turn interview the other students who want to be employees for their departments.  These interviews take place in our department office which is connected to classrooms.

The students who are enrolled in VE come from the whole school but are mainly students who have been in the department’s two academies–Marketing and Global Business.  The students are required to take accounting and multimedia so as to be able to do the tasks required of VE.  This year, for the first time, I am teaching the multimedia classes.  In the first four weeks of school we have discussed target markets and how to appeal to them in print; we have designed a font; we have designed two club flyers in Adobe PageMaker; we have resized and manipulated photos in Adobe Photoshop and laid out a small advertising piece using the students own photos taken around campus.  We designed name badges and imported them into PageMaker for resizing.  Not a whole lot yet, but enough to keep the students hopping.

As I walked through the department office yesterday, on my way to my desk, the VE management team, many of the members whom I have in multimedia, was interviewing the underlings.  I overheard one of my students ask, “do you know PageMaker and PhotoShop?,” to which I wanted to ask, “do YOU?”  Give them a little knowledge and they think they know it all.

Not on a roll

Maybe it’s because I love to read.  Maybe it’s because I’m nosey (I like to think curious).  Maybe it’s because I want to learn new things (again, curious).  Whatever the reason, I love to read  blogs.  That blog roll over there on the right, I love all those places.  I love to go to those blogs, read what’s there, and then take off from their blog roll to find other great writing.

School is back in full force and I am running from early in the morning until I collapse in bed, although that is pretty early because I am tired.  There is little time to read all those blogs and I have fallen behind.  Makes me sad.  Maybe, just maybe, I will get some time this afternoon to just sit and read, and catch up on what others are doing, find something new, and perhaps have time to put some new words in my own blog.  I really have lots to talk about, or so I think.

Free coffee for teachers

I just read about this over on another blog and wanted to pass it along.  Starbucks is giving free coffee to teachers each Monday in September.  I don’t drink coffee, but I hope lots of teachers take advantage of the offer.  It’s nice when a company does something special for us.

Okay, what does this mean?

We had to come up with seven headlines in yearbook today for those faculty pages.   I divided the kids into five groups, heading each group with a returning yearbook staffer, and in 10 minutes they had to come up with as many headlines as they could.  We came back together and, without naming the group, I read the headlines, one at a time, and the whole class voted, thumbs up/thumbs down.  

One of the headlines was, “we care,” which got not just thumbs down, but some boos.  Wait a minute, teachers DO care, I exclaim.   “Mrs. Zody, not all teachers are like you,” was the reply from a new kid who hardly knows me.  Okay, what does this mean?

Keeping cool in the neighborhood

I stood at the end of our driveway this morning, after picking up the newspaper which I usually do in the dark now, but since it’s Saturday, I’m up later, and looked around the neighborhood.  I realized I am surrounded by big, tall trees.  When we moved to this house 28 years ago, the neighborhood was pretty new with young landscaping.  I remember a friend of mine saying that it looked kind of naked because there weren’t any trees.  I looked around and thought, “yes there are trees, they’re just small.”  Well, those trees grew up.

Even though our temperatures this summer have been over 100 on many days, my power bill (courtesy of PG&E) has remained reasonable.  I cringe every month when the bill arrives, and then I am pleasantly surprised when I see how low the cost is.  As I stood there this morning, looking at all those trees, up and down my street, I realized that there was my cost savings.  Those trees are keeping the air cooler, thus keeping my house cooler.  Now, how do I keep the heating costs down in the winter?