Houses in Fresno

Houses in Fresno

Originally uploaded by dkzody

One of the abandoned, boarded up houses in downtown Fresno that we found on our walk. These old homes sit just in the shadow of the freeway, and across the street from the new Fifth Appellate Courthouse.

Fall foliage

Fall foliage

Originally uploaded by dkzody

A picture from our walk about town.

Another marathon week

My senior marketing class had another marathon week, with their fearless teacher leading the way.

On Tuesday, our regular Junior Achievement mentor brought along a tv news crew to tell the story of entrepreneurship and teenagers.

We were on the evening news.

The next day we spent the whole period, working feverishly to get our Red Ribbon Week door decorated for the next day’s judging:

We didn’t win.

Thursday morning we headed to our local community college, only two blocks away, for a morning of motivational speakers from Extreme Tour about being entrepreneurial.  This is great jumpstart for the kids’ business plans.

Thank goodness we get an extra hour this weekend, I need it.  I’m also taking Monday off as my body, soul, and spirit are exhausted.  I have to recharge to get ready for the next marathon.

What about ME? So selfish

I have been working so hard, running at such a hectic pace (why do so many of my posts start this way?).  I want to do something fun JUST FOR ME.

 

The ride

“Why are you late to school every morning,” our secretary asked the two seniors, Bernard and Rose.

“We live across the street from one another and sometimes we miss our ride.  Or our ride is late,” Bernard replies.

“We live a long way from school, too far to walk,” pipes in Rose.

“Take the bus.”  That’s the secretary’s solution.

“Well, if we catch our ride, it’s better.”

“But, you cannot continue to be late to first period.  Mr. V is not going to tolerate it and you will spend detention on the football field with him at practice.  Got it?”

Our secretary tells me all this because I have the two seniors later in the day.

“Who is their ride,” I ask.

“Don’t know, maybe the father and he goes to work before they get up or maybe it’s another kid who takes off without them.”

That conversation took place three days ago.  Yesterday the school newspaper comes out, and inside is a big article on Bernard and his fine car that he drives to school every day.

The Chalk Art Competition

Thank you, dear Reader, for sticking with me through all of this madness.  We have been working so hard on this event for almost two months now, and it finally happened.  The Chalk Art Competition was one part of the Lights on Afterschool two-day rally held in our area.  My marketing 3 students helped plan and produce the chalk art competition.  They were pretty pleased with the outcome even though there were only five entrants.  Here is the winner:

My students and one of the signs they painted:

Notice how their shirts match the sign even though they didn’t get the shirts until the day of the event.

Although our event was held outside, the awards were given on the stage inside where the dance competition was happening.  Here is the audience:

My students learned so much doing this project.  Today we evaluated the whole process, getting our planning boards out to see how we did.  It was obvious that we took off, going full speed; and we ended with a flurry of activity; but in the middle, we slumped.   I think this is typical in any long term project so we discussed how we could counteract that slump, especially if we were working in the “real world.”   It is my hope that years from now, my students will remember doing all of this and can use the lessons they learned.

Now, what are we going to do next?

On TV

Three of my marketing seniors were on a local morning show today, highlighting the project they have been working on for two months now.  The culmination is Wednesday when students from around the Valley will convene at Sierra Vista Mall for a variety of afterschool activities, ours being a sidewalk chalk art competition.  The tv piece was to get publicity and, hopefully, more signups.

One of the girls decided she would do a piece of chalk art to demonstrate how it’s done for the tv audience.  

Here is the finished product:

And here are the other two students being interviewed for one of the live segments:

And then it was back to the reality of school.  Although only 10 a.m. when we finished, the kids felt like they had done a days’ work.

“Can’t we go to the zoo,” was the pleading from the backseat.

“No, we have work to do at school, and I have four more classes to teach today.”

What do you have to show for it?

Homecoming was last week.  I assigned the multimedia students to take photos of all the events for the week, and using the text I gave them about the event, design a brochure using the pictures that would appeal to  8th grade students.  The could share photos if they wanted, and could use PhotoShop methods to make the pictures even more interesting.

Today I printed out their work.  I am going to have them make corrections and redo the brochures.  That is, the 11 out of 27 students who actually turned in work.  For the most part, they just sat there, staring at their computers this past week.  Too few took pictures.  Too few care about homecoming,  or any extracurricular activity, for that matter.  Too few have much creative spirit.

Last year, the first time I made this assignment, I had no previous work to show the students, but they got the idea and worked hard on it.  Of course, I had Academy students, football players, and cheerleaders in the multimedia classes.  They had buy-in.  They cared about the activity and wanted to show off their pictures and their creativity.  I showed their brochures to this year’s classes so as to motivate them.  I think it worked better when I had nothing to show.

Be forewarned: poor writing ahead; or so says Mr. MovieMaker

Not only do I wonder what brings people to this blog, I also wonder how others find the blogs to which they post comments.  This musing comes about from a post I read this morning that I found after clicking on a link that had sent a reader here.  I skimmed the postings and hit on one with the same subject (schools) and went off to read a nice essay about a frustrated high school student who is not doing well in school even though she is certainly smart enough to do better.  Seeing that no one had posted a comment,  I quickly dispatched a brief note about getting through school and going on to other pursuits with perhaps a hobby to showcase her creative side.

Later this afternoon I decided to check back on the blog to see if the young lady had other posts (she did not as this was her first); however, there were many comments made after mine; one from a movie production employee who took my writing to task.  Because I had identified myself as a teacher, he threw me under the bus along with all that is wrong with the educational system.  To be exact, he wrote, “this teacher’s writing is rife with grammatical errors: poor ellipsis use, terrible comma use, more condescending colloquialisms, run on sentences. I’d hold it up as an example of exactly what is wrong with the system.”

Whoa…after reading that (please note, more ellipsis), perhaps it is a good thing I am planning to leave teaching.  I must be severely damaging my students.  And here I thought I was helping them with their creative pursuits.  I wonder, though, how did this movie maker find the girl’s original post?  It seems a far stretch from what I would expect his usual haunts to be.  For that matter, I find it hard to believe he would even have time to be out wandering in blogland.  I sure don’t have as much time for that as I would like.  I don’t even have as much time to write here as I have ideas for posts.  So, dear Reader, my apologies for the poorly written posts you have been reading.  I cannot promise they will get any better, though, but rather more run on sentences with condescending colloquialisms.

Playing with PhotoShop

I am not a PhotoShop pro even though I attempt to teach it.  Layers and masks were my lessons this month.  After finding an old photo that I had wanted to give a friend, I realized I needed to put some of my PhotoShop skills to use to make it a better photo.

Before PhotoShop

After