We saw the second of three live shows in a week and a half last night.  This one was in Jersey City at WFMU's Monty Hall.  The band was The Pandoras.  Sigh.....  A fabulous time.  they have been my favourite all women garage band since early high school.  I love having live pictures taken by me as a memento, but I do not like having my eye stuck behind the viewfinder all show.  I only shot for the first two songs and then I relaxed and enjoyed it.  The place had carpeting!  It was like being at someone's parents' house.  But the parking was so much better than Maxwell's and the vibe was far less hipster.  A fine replacement.

So this begins our first full week of school.  Back to School Night is in the past.  SGO is completed with the baseline reporting to be completed once my rosters are set and all kids who will drop or add have done so.  With all the nitty gritty stuff done, I can start to have kids stay during their lunches or study halls.  I can't believe that some wanted to start last week.  Oof.  

Most of the AP kids have show me their digital images from the summer assignments.  They are actually much better than I expected.  They balked at the idea of summer work and I never heard from them on any sort of regular basis so I feared the work was not happening.  One student went out west.  His canyon images are so good.  Not your typical vacation shots.  I found a bundle of new student photo competitions and I want him to submit to one of them...  Their journals were not really written in a regularly as I had hoped.  I think that is a by product of people's lack of ability to have sustained conversations and thoughts.  Everything is limited to a tweet length.  I want to give feedback in the journals this week so that I can return the books and have them write a journal entry a week.  They must learn to record their thoughts so that they can better reflect on their work and the process.

The Photo II classes all followed the same plans for their pinhole camera construction.  I don't know why I didn't do this before.  Having them bring in their own containers was a nice idea that got the idea that anything could be a camera pretty nicely.  But the variables are too broad.  At least with the same camera shape and size, exposure instruction should be easier.  And helping them in constructing the camera was much easier with everyone needing the same help.  They could help each other much more.  Today should be nice out so we will go outside to do our exposures.

And Photo I?  Whoa.  They are paying so much attention to the directions and the process that I can skip the 8"x10" photograms.  They get the concept of light sensitivity and photographic paper that I have bumped up how soon I will begin instruction on the camera.  With the way these classes are going, I think I can shift the due dates up, not need to cut out any projects, and address the history of the medium in a more in depth way than ever before.  This could shape up to be a really cool year.  I might be able to teach these courses exactly as I have wished....