Labor day update

Haven't written anything here since school started, and we're already two weeks into the school year now. All the classes I took over the summer are paying off, and I've taught more in the first two weeks of Video Production than I taught all last year.

Other classes are going OK so far, but my Graphic design and Web classes are sparse. Journalism and Video are huge. I'm being pulled in new directions whether I like it or not. It seems that my lot is always to be teaching just out of my comfort zone, and I guess if I had to choose I'd opt for keeping it this way. Growth is not comfortable, and has to be forced on most of us, who would rather be revered sages dispensing knowledge securely pinned down and calcified years ago. Instead, my whole field, communication and design, makes a major technical and aesthetic sea change every year or so. New software and hardware, new possibilities, new trends and taste (or lack of). Exhausting yet exhilerating.

It's early in the year to tell if any students will emerge as big talents, and naturally if they appear it makes my job more interesting and fun, but some years are better than others, and I have to teach them all 'as if', because I've learned from past students that the most unlikely ones sometimes go on to do great things. Not for me to pass judgement, but I still hope to see that spark in some of them.

My first year of teaching Journalism here. The school paper will be coming out soonish and the pressure's on, and people will be watching closely. It's been called the Sandpiper, but my students and I want to re-name it. What the hell does a delicate shore bird signify to any of our MTV'd out students? They have voted on "Un_Folded", but the principal is hesitant, citing tradition, and as a compromise I've suggested, "Un_Folded, the paper formerly known as the Sandpiper".

It could be worse. I could have decided to question the clownish religious figure passing as our public school mascot. The Padre, as in Junipero Serra, the Catholic missionary. The kids sometimes refer to him as that little Indian killer... As a Jewish/Muslim female I just can't relate to being called a Padre. Padre, schmadre, I say. But I'll save that battle for another day. It would mean taking on the whole community, and I'm not that invested. After my martyrdom they would only replace him with some viscous animal anyway. Tigers, bears, cougars, panthers, WHATever....Or hey, how about a Sandpiper! The Mighty Sandpipers! Crush 'em, Sandpipers!