Grades and Graffiti

I've fallen behind again. Sorry. Nothing much has changed or happened.  If I get feeling ambitious I may attempt to write a make up blog or two about some of the professional development that we have had, some things going on in the classroom, and/or a little shopping trip with friends from church where I scored an awesome clock with Arabic numbers. Chances are that won't happen so don't hold your breath. I'm just pretty much going to post about today and then try to keep up with posts better in the future.

Our first set of report cards were due this past week. Report cards suck to write. They're even less fun when your work computer is ancient and about to die like mine. We are getting new ones soon, but I could have used a new one last week. I wrote all of my comments in Word. Almost all of us do because it's easier to write and edit them. (we have to have a peer edit our comments when we're done, and then the leadership team edits them as well before the parents get them) When I went to upload them (copy and paste) into the system we have to sue I had all kinds of problems including a 10+ minute wait after every comment I entered. Each student has 5 comments. I have 22 students. Luckily, it worked just fine on a friends computer so I was able to enter them in there.

This week we have conferences. They do them a little different here. We have what they call three-way conferences with the teacher, parents, and student. It means two very late nights but we have a Thursday off (American Thanksgiving) and that gives us a long weekend so yea!

A couple weeks ago there was a thing in our staff newsletter about a graffiti workshop being offered today. I have never heard about a workshop or class to learn graffiti so I thought that was super cool. It was a little pricey, but hey, like I said, when do you get to learn how to do this? When I was thinking about things I would get to do while I was in Kuwait, learn how to do graffiti was not on the list. It's funny the random things/people that will come into your life.

My friend Sinae signed up and came with me. We were the only Westerners there. It was a lot of fun, really hard, and I would totally do it again. I'm a little surprised at how much I do want to try again. The instructor liked the way I did my bubble letters when we practiced on paper so that's what I did, but I would like to try something with more sharp edges and boxy next time.

I knew it would be awesome when I was greeted by these two super cute puppies. (In my world all dogs are puppies and all cats are kitties.) They practically jumped up and hugged me. 

Getting my doggy loves! 

We started out talking about different types of graffiti and then how to go about making your letters.

Then we tried on own and the teacher guy came around and tweaked them and gave us feedback. 

We each got a bag of spray nozzles and we could have taken the half empty cans of spray. I'm kinda regretting the fact that I didn't take any- although I still can't think of where I would use it....

That's our instructor showing us how to do it with the spay can.

I got started outlining in red while I waited for them to find yellow for me.

All filled in, which is a lot harder than it looks. 

I forgot to take a picture before I outlined it-- I'm pretty bummed about that. 

Before I added the highlight and apparently the ONLY pic I took of Sinae's work. What the heck??!

With the highlight and the squiggly stuff off the ends of the word. 

Final product. I don't like my tag-- I need to work on that. 

Other people in the workshop with their work. 

Pretty sure this kid has done graffiti before. 

This kid too. The two kids seemed to have done this before.  

This girl was cool. She's a graphic art student I think she said.  

This guy tried some stencil stuff with his. I liked his at this stage. He kept adding to it and it just got to be too busy- in my opinion.   

Sinae's work. One guy about had a fit that she was going to work in those shoes. He really wanted her to take them off.

And Sinae's final product. :) I think we did a pretty good job for our first time. We had fun anyways.