School starts today and I'm already swamped

This year I have several new things on my plate.  The biggest change is that I'm no longer using someone else's textbooks for my Makeup and Costuming classes.  I have decided to write my own books for Professional Developement and have a deadline of July 25, 2015.  My internal goals are to have Makeup finished by December and Costuming finished by May.  That will give me June to run them by the IT department to get all the bugs worked out.  Did I mention that they will NOT be paper books?  Yes, ebooks is where the world is headed so I'm jumping in feet first.  Phase One will be to publish locally through our BlackBoard server.  My students will be my Beta testers.  Phase Two (once I get the bugs worked out) will be to publish through Amazon Direct Publishing and make it available to the public.

As some of you may know this is Jerry MacLauchlin's last year as our director/choreographer and soon it will be time to search for a new faculty member.    Tell all your friends about our position.  I may end up being the Head of the Search Committee.

We have a new Coordinator of Theatre this year and it's Kelly Parker.  Congratulations Kelly and good luck to you in your new position.  Too bad it doesn't come with a pay raise.

For the first time ever, our department will recruit at a Comicon!  It was my idea and luckily the nice gentlemen in charge of our HOT Comicon: Con of the Living Dead, have offered us a free table in exchange for advertising and promotion on campus.  Our numbers are low this year so we really need to get more students interested in taking our technical theatre classes.  Hopefully our season brochures will be printed by then and we'll get some new audience members as well.

Remember back in May when I did my first ever series of print ads for the Waco Transit Authority?  Well, that campaign is ready to roll out.  I have seen the first ads this weekend and as soon as they go live I'll be able to post them here so that you can see them too.  They look really professional and I'm so proud to have been a part of that.  The first one will be showing on the digital billboard at Valley Mills and Bosque, so keep an eye out for it.  Julie promises it will be up sometime this week.

On a personal note, I now have three kids at three different schools for the first time ever.  It's crazy trying to get Sylvan all the way across town after I drop Sarah off, but I suppose I'll get used to it.  He loves his new school, especially Mr. Ellis his reading teacher.  I love that he's playing Trumpet in Band!  And of course there's still gymnastics for Sarah and piano lessons for them both to keep them busy.

If you're teaching or still in school or have kids that are still in school, I wish you a very exciting start of the new school year.  Here's to lifelong teaching and learning!