To: for Tuesday, a day late

Sorry for the delay- just back from the New Mexico wedding. It was fun, but odd that our friends the devout Baptists didn't check to see that the Santa Fe Gay Pride celebration was the same weekend as their big day. Rob and I enjoyed bouncing back and forth between the two groups, but I don't think our experience was typical of the other wedding guests...

And here are the To:'s for Tuesday, from the trip.

To: proVision
From: Factory Upgraded Traveler

THANKS, proVision, for the spiffy new technology at the airport. This is the first time in three years that I didn't have to suffer the pat-down search because of my titanium knee. This is a VERY welcome change.

Of course, having to empty my pockets of EVERYTHING, and then hold my hands over my head , crossed, like I'm about to be trampled by Godzilla (or, possibly, supplication to a great power) is a little akward. And knowing the that the micro-technology that scans me and then stores my file and probably sends it up somwhere on the internet (oh, PLEASE not YouTube) showing off what a life of dissipation looks like; knowing that is a little spooky. But, like many, a few minutes saved is worth lots of embarrassment and a total forfeit of a few rights to privacy.

Now, my fear? If you do store these scans, will the system compare each scan with the new scan? Becuase frankly, if the system croaks out "getting a little wider around the belt line" or "lay off the nachos" each time I enter the scanner (designed to look a lot like a salad spinner) it might lose its charm. Especially if it scans at the start, and end, of the vacation. Spooky.

What about purchasing the scans? If I'm traqveling with my Journalism students to a conference, can I get a print out of who is carrying what? THAT might be useful. On second thought, that might provide WAY to much information.

So, thanks again for the technology and the speedy way it gets me through security.

To: Eske's Brew Pub (Taos), and Kelly's (Albuquerque) and Second Street Brew Pub (Santa Fe)
From: Better Living Through Beer

Thanks, for everything. No, two pints IS the new one pint. I swear.

To: The Two Ladies with their Four Foster Children
From: The Guys at the Other Table

LOVED getting to know you two. Thanks for proving that families come in all shapes, sizes and colors. Fostering four young boys is a challenge I can't imagine.

You have no idea how much I wanted to shoot the straw paper from MY straw, too. Maybe someday I'll grow up enough to be a kid again. When that day comes around, I'm going to enjoy myself as much as your sons. Until then, I'll be remembering them laughing and smiling and having a great time with thier moms, watching the folks from the Pride parade drifting by the big wide windows.

Thanks for giving of yourselves and doing something that I could never do. Lunch was our pleasure!

To: Michael Reynolds, of Earthship and the Greater World Community
From: Intrigued Architecture Buff

Thanks for the great experience, wandering through the Earthship just outside Taos. The building speaks for itself- WOW! Sustainable is great, but selling it through the idea of "no power bills, water bills, etc." THAT's pretty bright.

I might slap a big sticker on the whole thing that says "OK'd for the Middle Class!" or possible "you don't have to be a hippie to live here," but I digress.

Beautiful buildings, nicely presented. I'm not sure I'm ready to commit to a community that might not appreciate my leather tennis shoes, or my deep rooted need for a washing machine. But, maybe someday?

In the mean time, let's get to work on a solar clothes washer, solar dishwasher, and why not a solar AGA stove/oven? Just thinking here.

'To' for Tuesday

Welcome to 'To' for Tuesday-

Today (and all the other Tuesdays I can manage) will be a celebration of the letters we'd like to write if only people would read them, and take the well meaning, measured advice, to heart.

I mean, really, this is well thought out stuff!
-
To: The High School Staff
From: Your Yearbook Adviser

Welcome back to school!
It's going to be a GREAT YEAR! Forget all about last year, we have 180 days (well, a few less due to furlough days) to make things great! Let's commit TODAY to working together to make this years Yearbook, the 2011 Beige and Gray, the Best Book Ever!

Here are a few gentle reminders and guidelines for you to commit to memory and comply with. Our book is only as good as our content, and you and your students are part of our content, so we all share this responsibility!

Your classes:

1. If possible, please have interesting and engaging things happening during 4th period, the yearbook period. We frequently come into classes and the students are working away on some educational activity- BORING. We need excitement! We need color!
2. FIRE is always a big hit. Foods and Chemistry classes have an advantage here, but there is no reason to not include flames/fire into a math lesson, English essay, etc. Be creative, people. Flaming jump-ropes in PE? Flambe' in French II? That's the spirit!
3. Attractive students make for better images. Of course we all love all the students equally, but really, there are beauty winners and beauty losers. If possible, cluster the pretty students toward the front (a wide aperture will blur the less fortunate to a homey, homely, less shocking background)
4. Candids are gold! But, let's not get crazy here. Candids can look a little, well, disgusting. Unkempt hair, authentic facial expressions, unblended eye-shadow: these may be great on National Geographic television, but not for OUR book. Remember, we have no idea which classes we will pop in to, which would make it almost impossible to prepare. So, this year, we will send out a yearbook staffer (a drone; or in the vernacular, a 'freshman') 10 minutes before we 'pop' in unannounced. Take the time to spruce up yourself and your students (not YOU, Mr. Suave, you're always a dream). Check hair, teeth, blemishes, birth-defects, unattractive health-care equipment. This is a team effort, after all.

Clubs

1. Please have all of your students present every meeting. It's SO frustrating to swing by to that one meeting, on that one day, and have the club president absent for some emergency surgery. Encourage your students to stop thinking just of themselves, and think more about the yearbook. After all, which will look better in 20 years? You see my point.
2. For 2011, we are 'switching it up' a little. Festive, attractive clubs have earned a double page spread each. Time management is difficult; taking the extra time to get highlights and extensions, making the extra effort for killer abs and perky pecs, suffering perpetual teeth whitening for that dazzling smile needs to be rewarded. Therefore, all clubs that just sit around raising money for the poor, the unfortunate, the ill and the unpopular will be moved to the index.
3. Uniforms, Club T-shirts and spirit wear must be approved through our Director of Visuals and Apparel. Let's not repeat last year's "plaid-tastrophe"- you know who I'm talking about, Junior Statesmen.

Sports

1. Maybe we'll go to playoffs, maybe not. But we can still LOOK like champs! Twenty years from now, no one will remember if we won, or lost, or were disqualified for breaking antiquated pharmacology rules. Encourage your students to attend, and cheer, for every level, every sport and every game. Striking photos include tears, shrieks, conniptions and fits. A few high-caffeine and sugar 'energy' drinks might help.
2. Injuries are tragic, but visually stunning! Remember the compound fracture on the football field in 2008? Moments like that don't happen by accident. Coaches are encouraged to remove spikes from cleats, oil the gym floor for basketball and volleyball, raise those hurdles just a few millimeters higher than standard, etc. These kids are surprisingly resilient. What means more, a moment of bone-crushing, career-ending agony or being immortalized in the yearbook? Thought so.
3. The cheerleaders are a surprising problem. They are just too attractive (well, almost all of them). In a nod to our multi-culturalism, I have asked the cheer coach to clad the girls in burkas. It adds a hint of mystery, and sets the bar so much lower for the dance team, the hip-hop team, and the female members of the faculty.
4. The scoreboard operator has agreed to reset the boards at the end of each game to a winning score. Please have all the athletes who are still ambulatory cluster under the board, thumbs up, for the last shot of the game.

Faculty Portraits

1. Contrary to the rumors, we WILL be taking the faculty portraits. However, we won't be using them. Each teacher's portrait will be substituted with the image of a soap-opera actor or actress from an obscure country (Guatemala, Ukraine, Canada, Asia, Montana). PE teachers can substitute players from the WNBA or National Soccer Leagues.

Deadlines

1. This year, we hope to sweep the awards categories (see below). To accomplish this, we need to submit the book a little earlier to ensure high quality printing in the 3-D sections, adequate time to embed the Alma Mater song-microchip into the cover, and retouch all the unfortunate photos. So, we must submit the final of the book by the second week of school to Herf-walwOr-joST-TayLor (AKA HOSTL). Thus:
2. Week 1: Homecoming, Senior Ball, Fall and Winter Sports, Food Faire
3. Week 2: Spring Sports, Talent Show, Blood Drives I, II and III, Candids, Prom, Graduation

Distribution

1. Never to early to start planning! Students who have purchased a book will be corralled in the gym. When I shoot the starter's pistol, all students will then run to the cafeteria to claim their book. To save money, we will only print half of the number of books ordered.
2. Students who still have fines or fees, or unserved detentions, or parking violations, or unreturned textbooks, or costs at the cafeteria, or a dirty locker, or once parked over the line in the parking lot, or did not return a borrowed pencil, will have their yearbooks remotely detonated. This obliterates both the book and the problem.

Awards

Everyone likes to win; we strive to dominate. The yearbook is only as good as a far-away, obscure panel of judges decides it is.

Our favored categories for this year's ImplantedDefibrilator contest? Glad you asked!

1. Most Text on a Page
2. Still More Text on a Page
3. My Goodness Thats a Lot of Text on Only One Page
4. One Really Big Picture with Overprinted Text
5. Photoshop Filter Faux-Pas
6. Non-Sequitor Captioning
7. Putting the Ew in Lewd
8. Murky Lurkers in The Background
9. Popular With The Judges But Sold At A Loss
10. Typo Hawl of Faem
11. Giddy Grids & OCD Layouts: The Straight and Narrow
12. I Didn't Know Photos Came in Those Shapes
13. Every Font, Every Page, Every Time
14. Don't Rain on My Clip Art Parade
15. Obscure Club/Sports Coverage
16. Photoshopped to Phabulous
17. I Can See Your Wingding
18. Unflattering Angle/Lighting
19. Senior Superlatives Slander-Palooza
20. Whoops- Were You Eating?
21. Wrestling Pictures That Don't Make Us Feel Awkward
22. It's a Trend If We say It Is
23. Wait! Deadline was Today? (Procrastination-Nation)
24. Nightmare On Tenure Street: What Prior Review Didn't Catch
25. When Stock Covers are Good Enough for Us
26. Whatever: Freshmen Coverage
27. Lighten Up: The Kids Who Wear Black All Day Every Day

Thanks for reading to the end!

Remember, without you, the yearbook would just be a well-run, very organized collection of signature pages with a sprinkling of internet photos and an inaccurate index.

More Monday

My wonderful sister asked a few weeks ago how the blog was going. Oh, my silence was a little painful.

So, we're back.
Summer is here, the living is easy and cosy and nice and a little caffeinated. A great mix.

The year ended well- the yearbook was a success, made $5k in a down economy (yay!) and the paper was well received, even after the sex survey debacle (waiting to hear more on that, I suppose). the kids were very happy with their product, I am very proud of them, and it all came together. Even when it seemed like it may not, it did. Amazing.

And tomorrow I start with the first of my architecture classes at the community college. Exciting.

So, that's what has happened, but here's the crux of this whole thing. My sister recommended themes for the days. She's pretty bright, that one. Writing prompts. Like, I dunno, maybe as an English teacher I could have come up with these? Maybe. Sigh.

More Mondays- what would YOU like more of? what would I like more of?
I'd like a few more days like the last day of school, and graduation. It's a GREAT day for most. Smiles all around. The students stomp their way through the ceremony, I get to photograph the whole thing and make the photos available at the school website (VenturaHS.com). So, more of that, please.

I'd like more less neck. Odd? Well, I had neck surgery in December to reduce the swelling from the exploded lymph node years back, and it seems the neck swelling it back. Not as bad, but dang. It happens, I guess, but losing weight and having a size 19 neck, well. Not so fun. So more less neck please.

I'd love more sunny and overcast days. LOVE these summer days of doing very little, fog burning off in the mornings just as the caffeine kicks in. THAT's nice.

More jobs for new teachers, if possible. It's funny, this year for the first time in a while I realize I'm just as concerned for the new teachers in our district as I am for the graduating seniors. Talking to Robbie last night, it became ever more clear that I am in a great mid-point of my teaching career. I love what has brought me here, and am looking forward to the next 15 years until I retire. Thinking of all the things I can accomplish, all the things my students will be teaching me in the coming years- it's exciting.

However (but can be such an ugly word), I realized that because I spent the first 18 years of my life being ignored, I have spent the last 18 years of my life paying attention. I had little voice, so I have made it my priority to provide a voice to the students. For years, I had to listen to them, and give them the forum to speak out. I'm thinking maybe I couldn't help it.

Times change, and we change with them. At this point for me, I have spent so much time listening and forcing others to listen to students that it has become fundamental to my life. So, while I may not support student press for the same reasons, I think I'm entering a point in my life where I support it more vehemently for better reasons. Instead of having to because of my personal history, now I want to because of the value it provides. weird.

Doing the right thing for a personal reason leads to doing the right things for the right reason. A friend's comment floats through all of this- "fake it 'til you make it.'

One of the other advisers in the district commented on how much I trust the students to make the right decision. I realized the error in that. I don't trust the students too much, but I may trust the educators too little. More thinking on that, please.

Launching an investigation into Architecture gives me a little more distance. That'll be nice. Let's see where that goes.

Well, that's a lot for a Monday!