« July 2006 | Main | September 2006 »
August 29, 2006
New School Year – 2006
We are three days into the school year and already things are getting hectic. I never understood exactly how busy the Media Center could be. This week I have learned. We are making some major changes – trying to open up the room and weed out some older material. There is a lot of organizing going on and I believe it will make it more convenient and functional for the students and staff.
I have heard for some time how crowded CBA was – but until I experienced it, I did not know exactly what that entailed. We have 14 “educational cottages” out back. My first teacher workday I got stuck in the middle of these trailer park and it literally took me a while to figure out I had to go back to the beginning, back into the building, through the hallway and back outside to another whole set of ramps to get into the other half of the units. Talk about confusing. The kids look like salmon fighting the current in the hallways but they grin and bear it. That is a testament to their maturity and perseverance.
Yesterday evening over 200 members of our community gathered to discuss the issues affecting the schools of northern Wayne County. Memebers of the Board of Education and County Commissioners as well as our own Advisory Council discussed the needs of our area schools. With all hope this will lead to a bond referendum being issued and passed that the taxpayers can afford that will benefit all the students of Wayne County.
Posted by hlperson at 08:24 PM | Comments (2)
August 15, 2006
Summer Wrap Up
Over the last month I have kept an extremely busy schedule. It’s not that I haven’t had time to blog, its just that I haven’t done it. Half of every day I have sat at a desk with three 19-inch flat panel monitors so I have had access. I have spend most of my mornings working on Senior portraits at Lifetouch. It’s been kind of funny because these same kids I use to teach as seventh graders come in with much larger bodies but the same devil-may-care behavior. One of the most humorous exchanges was watching Grant squeezed into Travis jeans walking around trying to get pictures taken. It is nice to know these kids did not grow out of their good humor.
Working with NCPics.com has also kept me relatively busy. We have added product photography to our rapidly expanding areas of service and finding and ordering the equipment has been a challenge and joy. I realized quickly this type of business could keep us as busy as we want to be and that is both a good thing and bad. The potential to be overwhelmed is right there lurking behind the schedule. We will have to make sure we do not over commit in this venture. Alex and I spent the better part of a day cleaning and converting the old campaign office into a small office area for photography. We set up our product photography area and workspaces as well as began organizing the already growing collection of videos from our weddings. This has the potential to be fun and profitable as long as we do not lose the fun part.
Yesterday I spent a good part of the day taking Smith into Snow Hill to pick up some big black leather chairs from my storage unit. He purchased four of them. Half the stuff in his classroom once resided in my classroom – it is nice to know that these items I labored to add to my classroom will continue to benefit kids.
I have written a couple of grants this summer. Pamela and I wrote a $60,000 grant to DPI for Wayne County for Service Learning. Since the two of us have been awarded almost $25,000 over the last 4 years we felt it was time to begin going a little bigger. We should know the first of September if we receive this grant. I also wrote a $5,000 grant to Dollar General for the Media Center at CBA. I have long been interested in audio books that students can listen to on their Ipods. (While they skim the Cliff's Notes for many of you) By September 22nd, we will know if we received the grant.
Tomorrow morning I begin my back to school routine with my first Media Coordinator’s meeting. It is in Jacksonville at a brand new high school. It should be nice to see new facilities and to begin this new journey of learning.
Posted by hlperson at 08:10 AM | Comments (5)