Well, my friends, in about 4 short hours the school year is over for the students.

My last exam is underway and I am working on final grades. This is always a melancholy time of the year for me on most levels and a happy time on a few others. While I am glad to have a break from my students, I worry about them over the summer, especially those I know who are in my program and coming back to my classes in the fall and those whom I know have not the ideal home life.

So yes, I'm glad to be done with the grind of “it's showtime” every 45 minutes (Cue the Bob Fosse images and the All That Jazz soundtrack) and am surely looking forward to a break and a chance to regroup and relax, but I also know from experience, that this break and finally the time to reflect will lead to the inevitable reassessment that all good teachers go through as we look back over the year and ponder what has transpired—for better or worse—and what worked and what didn't.

This has been a huge learning year for me.

Belatedly, about two months into the year, I finally received the new Adobe Creative software suite which enabled me to open up a whole new world of graphic and design capabilities across every class I teach. For the first time in my teaching career, I finally had access to a unified suite of the industry standards software for content creation. But, it also meant that I had to learn new software for every course I had been teaching as well as new software and a whole new educational paradigm in the Globaloria Flash Game course,  a course I taught for the first time this year. Because the software didn't arrive until almost the end of the first 9 weeks, it meant that I had to teach material that I was just learning. I spent the entire year jumping back and forth from researching and learning how to accomplish something in the software to immediately teaching that concept, then jumping into another software program and doing the same thing.

Rinse and Repeat. All. Year. Long

If you are old enough, to recall the Ed Sullivan Show and the man with the plates spinning on the wooden sticks. I swear I heard Ed several times this year, in the background, introducing me as part of his “really big shew.”

The learning curve was steep in all my courses. For example. I now had access to InDesign, for layouts and publication creation. I had never had access to this software before, I had, in the early and mid 90's used  several versions of Pagemaker, but had never had access to Quark. After Pagemaker went defunct, I used Freehand for for all my design and layout work for my classes. This was not the best solution but by necessity, because that was the only program I had.

In my graphics classes I now had a Illustrator, which I had never used. All the old knowledge I had of Freehand—gone—assigned to the dustbin of history (as President Reagan once opined about the Soviet Union.) So a whole new learning process for that program ensued.

Then there was the Flash Game Course. A brand new course, a brand new concept for me and of course a brand new software package, which I had never really taught before, as well as the other component of the game course, assimilating all the workings of and then the teaching Web 2.0 and avatars, wikis and blogs, oh my! (Apologies to the Wizard of Oz, still my daughter and my favorite movie)

I now had a workable version of Photoshop for my photography and graphic classes. I had previously had access to photoshop 4 but it wouldn't run on the new intel Processors of my new computers under Leopard so that was a new huge learning load. I  also for the first time ever had a computer for every one of the students in my classes. No more sharing, no more getting a computer every other or every third day. Each student had their own computer, and their own user account every day. It was wonderful to give my student such access, but also meant more software to teach because now I could fully teach the operating system to my students, which at least I knew. And giving every student computer access every day, meant that projects got done in half the time of previous years which required that I learn the new software at an accelerated pace
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I had a full load of classes, sponsorship of two school clubs and two school bluegrass bands as well as the mentoring of a sophomore homeroom and an advisory class.

It was a year for the books.

A year of great progress and great frustrations. And really, the planning for next year has already begun.  We are officially done on Wednesday the 9th and on the 14th I am scheduled to teach a week long mini academy in Game Design, and Photoshop to interested incoming freshmen. Probably just the mini game portion of the class and some basic drawing and maybe some time base animations, keyframing and tweening.

 For the Fall, my enrollment in all my classes is up from last year, particularly in the Game Design Classes, yes that's right
c-l-a-s-s-e-s, plural.  Last year because we got invited to become a Globaloria school, after scheduling was completed, I started with six students enrolled in the game class at the start of the year, and this year I already have 30 students, a five fold increase in enrollment!

The students in this years class loved the course and in a high school, word travels fast about which courses and which teachers are good which classes are interesting and worthwhile and which are not. So despite all the obstacles, I already have enrolled enough students for two classes, and I'm sure by the time schedules are finalized with the inevitable changes and as late enrollments come in over the summer,  I'll have two full classes, of 20—40 eager little gamers.

So, lots to assess, lots to evaluate, lots to do between now and then, for this class and all my courses. So I'll enjoy Thursday and Friday this week and then Monday back to teaching...

…and miles to go before I sleep,
    and miles to go before I sleep.

Look for a newly designed Blog for the upcoming year!