January The beginning of 2008 found us cramming two classrooms (tech room and classroom) into one t-building. It was quite a site to see:) You could only enter through one door, had a path directly to your seat and couldn’t make it completely around the room without backtracking to get to the other side. We chose to take this lightly and made many jokes about the room. To make matters even more laughable, there was a faulty smoke alarm that beeped all day long – seriously I couldn’t make this up! Yes we tried new batteries, didn’t work.
February Playing with clay was voted the favorite unit in multimedia. Students really had to improvise because of our room shortage:) There were groups on t-building steps, main building stairs, floor. You name it and they found a spot to complete their clay animation. We had everything from a banana on a skateboard to monsters with enormous teeth. Many even checked out cameras to worked at home!
March It snowed! Yes, it snowed in Louisiana on March 7th. Of course this led to a snow ball fight at the t-buildings and shop area, but it was all fun. They didn’t even cancel school, because we were already there and it was suppose to warm up later in the afternoon. The only thing I regretted was that the snow was gone by the time we got home and I wanted to play with my kids in the snow and take lots of pictures!
It looked like a blizzard at times
April
May We made it! Yes, we made it through the final year of on-site construction. Lots of packing and storing this month, but it is worth it. It think the packing was almost as much fun as a kid at Christmas. We also found out we were receiving a second year grant for $50,300; this will make the creation of the Freshman Academy easier.
June
July We’ll have to break away from “school happenings” for this month. My oldest son, Taylor, was named Male Karate-ka of the Year ages 13 – 17 for North America.
August New year, new school, and new room…the beginning of this school year was filled with so many emotions. Of course, excitement over a new building outweighs everything. A close second would be stress, due to the move into a new room being the day before school starts. The school is unbelievable. It truly looks like a junior college. We enrolled 100 new students the first full week of school! This also marked the beginning of our Freshman Academy. All Freshman core courses were moved to the same wing to better personalize the student’s education. An added bonus was the fact that they were probably they only students that actually knew where almost all their class where located.
September Having played around on a few macs over the years, I was thrilled to have the opportunity to convert the classroom to a mac lab. I’m also thrilled with the desks and presentation station that we chose. A special thanks to Barbara Colvin for all her hours of searching for the right style and sturdiness! The desks are constructed in pairs and open to access the computer. Best of all they are able to be locked up everyday. The students really think we are high tech:)
October The grand opening of the Tide Rock Cafe in the Freshman Academy was a highlight of this month. Each Freshman Academy teacher nominates a student to eat in the cafe. Student’s were nominated for a variety of reasons determined by each teacher. The cafe is open each friday October through December
November Coins for Callen
December
