No homecoming for me

Last night was homecoming at the inner city school where I spent over a third of my life. It’s a culmination of a week of activities at school with dress-up days, noontime games, and a king and queen campaign. Anyone who works in a high school anywhere in America knows the routine by heart. Friday night is the parade and the big football game. It’s always football. I hate football.

For four years in the 90s I was a class adviser, an unpaid, extra duty job that involved huge amounts of work with, for me, some great kids. Not every adviser is lucky enough to have great kids. I could tell you stories, but I won’t. We started each year by building a homecoming float. Unbelievable. Amount. of. WORK. As well as confusion, chaos, and all the sundry emotions that go along with high school kids. As freshmen, my class won the float competition, which is usually won by the seniors. We got our comeuppance in the senior year–we lost. Mainly because we didn’t have a “float” but rather three vintage Chevrolets that we used for a Grease performance. Everyone thought we were terrific but not the judges.

After 1999 I thought I was done with homecoming, and then I took over the yearbook. Homecoming is a BIG deal in the yearbook. The week’s activities, the royalty, the parade, the game. It all gets covered. But, by whom? Guess? Yep, the yearbook adviser and her husband were at every homecoming game for the next ten years, up to and including last year. I always tried to make it fun by chatting with all the parade participants, the parents, the coaches, the alumni who came to check out the new kids. For a few years I tried to sell yearbooks from a table I set up near the entrance gates. I got lots of gawkers and talkers, but few buyers. In all those years I think I sold five books from that little table.

Last year's homecoming

My husband spent the evening on the field taking photos of everything that happened down there. I took pictures of the stands and crowds. My yearbook students? They took pictures of themselves. They always thought those were the best shots and should have prominence on the homecoming spread in the yearbook.

So, last night was homecoming, and for the first time in 14 years, I was some place else.

What a great photo op

The freshmen academy put on a little end of the year celebration yesterday afternoon.  As I was walking across the lawn, heading to the parking lot, weighed down with my three black bags–computer, book, and purse–I saw the freshmen teachers scooping ice cream for a line of kids who were listening to a DJ while awaiting their treat.  My immediate thought was, “what a great photo op.”

Last year I would have stopped immediately, dropped all the bags, dug out the camera I carry at all times, and started shooting.  Photos, that is, for next year’s yearbook.  Gotta cover end of the year activities at the start of the book because it is a YEAR book and we finish the previous year’s book in MARCH.  I’m always on the lookout for photos to go in at the beginning of the book that have nonseniors in them.  This freshmen activity would be perfect.

But, wait, I’m done with yearbook.  We aren’t even too sure who will be doing the yearbook next year.  It will not be my responsibility and just because I like this photo op doesn’t mean the next adviser will.  So, I keep walking towards the parking lot, without looking back.

wonder what this is all about?

Tonight, while checking the stats for this blog, I find two searches that were used to reach the site:

delaine zody yearbook advisor email	2
delaine zody yearbook advisor fresno hig

All I could think:  Now what?  Who isn’t happy with their book?  Who is trying to find me to complain?  Maybe, just maybe, someone wants to give me money for all the hard work I put into these past nine yearbooks.  Or, get my advice on how to make a yearbook work in an inner city school that has one of the highest poverty rates in the nation?  That one I don’t have an answer for.

It’s yearbook time

The yearbook staff got the book today along with pizza and soda.  SODA???  Oh. My. Gosh.  Banned beverages in the classroom.  You know it’s almost the end of the school year.  The kids were happy with the book and the food.  They even hung around all afternoon, signing one another’s pages.

Tomorrow, starting at 7:30, I will hand out the 200 or so preordered books.  We will hand deliver books to the classrooms of those students who don’t make it by my office before class.  Then I will sell the remaining 50 books and call it a year, and a career.  Nine yearbooks.  I’ve camped here long enough.

Deadline is today? Ok, now I’ll work.

Why do students only begin to work when the deadline arrives?  Yearbook had winter sports due today.  Cheer and wrestling got their pages done and I made the submission and burned the CDs.  That’s my part of the job–submission.  Soccer and basketball weren’t able to finish theirs until after I was ready to ship the other pages.  They got mad at me because  I wouldn’t hang around and work on their timetable.

Same thing happened in multimedia.  The students had a brochure PDF due to give me.  Many have been right on top of this assignment, giving me pages to print so they can see how they are doing and what color and font adjustments they need to make.  Others got around to working today and then couldn’t understand why they couldn’t find clip art to fit the pages. Then there are the students who never bring their flash drive to class and want me to give them more time.

Our principal always speaks at the Academy graduation and he will mention that fact that students learn from Mrs. Zody that a deadline is a deadline is a deadline.  Well, some of them learn that.

Running as fast as I can

It was a busy weekend, going to San Francisco on Saturday and heading back home on Sunday after church in San Mateo and a short visit with our grand daughter and daughter.  I had to get home to make caramel corn and wash some clothes so I could return to school on Monday with a treat for my department and something to wear.

Monday was a minimum day with WASC work in the afternoon.  The classroom demands were not pressing since we were just getting started.  Yearbook, though, was another matter.   I worked on those underclass pages last week but I desperately needed more pictures to finish the junior section.  The staff tried to find photos we hadn’t already used, but we still needed over 30 additional pictures.

I have new students in word processing and multimedia classes.  They are keeping me busy bringing them up to speed.  Some power crazed person turned off the refrigerator in our office so it was defrosted and full of mold.  That took some cleaning up.  One of the Xerox machines in our office died over the break.

Our department secretary discovered a freshman in the hallway wearing pants that had tears in them, a dresscode violation.  In locating a parent to call, the secretary found that this little girl is the daughter of one of our former students, class of 1993.  This previous student dropped our program in her senior year because she didn’t like me.  I was too hard.  Unfortunately, the freshman doesn’t live with the former student.  We don’t know what happened, but she is now a foster child, and she didn’t even know her mother had attended the same school where she is attending.  I felt so sad to hear this.

We are back and running fast.

To think, to work, in quiet

It is a cold, gray, dismal day here in the San Joaquin Valley.  Planes have been grounded due to the heavy layer of fog.  I finally persuaded myself to leave the house at 9:30 when the temperature was 44.  It is now 46, just shortly after lunch.  I know, for those of you living in snow, you are probably wondering what the heck I’m crabbing about.  But, you must remember, this is the place where every day in July was over 100.

I went out at 9:30 so I could work on yearbook pages while it is still quiet at school.  We have another week of winter break, but those pages will be due at the printer soon, and they are pages I need to have lots of quiet to ponder–the underclassmen pages.  I assign 15 pages to each class, but with disparate numbers, I must juggle the number of pictures to each page.  This year, since we are a much smaller book, I am including candid photos mixed in with the head shots.  That takes even more thinking.  Fortunately, I had the yearbook kids take the photos during the fall and write the headlines for each page before leaving on break, so it’s just a matter of putting the puzzle together.

I only did the freshmen section this morning because I got so cold I had to leave before noon.  The district saves money by turning off all heating when school is out (or cooling if it was summer) so it is hard to go in and get too much work done.  In the summer I take fans to keep me cool; today I sat in my coat and worked.  I also played CDs of Mexican music to help me think of warmer climes.

I’m going back tomorrow to do the sophomores’ pages.  I won’t go until noon, though, so it might be a smidge warmer, but I doubt it.  We have the same forecast for the week–cold, gray, 40s and 50s, with fog lifting late afternoon.  It’s January and that is typical.

So, what did I do this week?

I took 14 yearbook students to the Josten’s printing plant in Visalia.  We do this every year, and this was my ninth trip.  Every year there is more renovation.  I love to see all that they are doing to keep up to date.  Unlike schools, businesses innovate.

Here are my students in front of one of the big color presses:

While perusing the art department, a group of girls found a book they really liked and wanted to imitate:

This was a size 7 book for Trinity High School two years ago.  Trinity is not an inner city school.  We are.  Trinity is an all white school.  We aren’t.  Trinity probably has no gang problem.  We have a huge one; actually two distinct gangs and a few smaller ones.

I think the idea of a notebook motif is good and one that I could go along with.  This one?  Not so much.

I just need more time (and money)

I am running as fast as I can without falling down.  The days are flying by. (I bet you are all saying this and thinking, “does this woman think she’s the only one who has more to do than time allows?”)    I know that many of you are up to your eyebrows (waxed or not) in work and wondering when you will get time to sit and think.

As I was running from office to classroom this morning, I hollered into our secretary’s office, “can you get me another hour?”

“Sure, when I go get another brain,” was her reply which I hardly heard because I was already around the corner.

My marketing students are good, but operating on their own agenda.  My word processing students are probably the best I have ever had.  The multimedia kids are beginning to realize that I move fast and we already have three assignments due by tomorrow.  ”But school just started.”

Then there are the yearbook students.  This class is breaking my heart.  We have sold a mere 52 books and four ads.  There is little hustle and bustle in the students except to tell me how big they want the book and they want a full color book.  We still owe money for last year’s book so this year will probably be smaller if we don’t get some money in the account pretty soon.  Twenty seven hundred students, and we sell 200 yearbooks.  What is up with that?

So, time and money…anyone know where I can get some more?

Thank you, Lord, for my words

I use these books on a regular basis in yearbook.  We are always seeking a WORD or PHRASE.

Books of words

They weren’t on the shelf this morning when I was planning my yearbook lesson today.  Who would steal three books of words?  I knew that no student would have taken them, and then I could see myself loaning them to someone last year.

“Lord, I need help in finding these books.  Who has them? “

I emailed one teacher who I thought might have them.  Then I walked into another teacher’s classroom, actually to talk to our secretary, and there were the books on the other teacher’s shelf.  ”Thank you, Lord, for my words.”  Now I can teach my lesson.