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Paragonbaka
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Name: Christopher
Country: United States
State: Indiana
Metro: Muncie
Gender: Male
Interests: Drawing, writing, theatre, games, long lost friends, sculpting, dancing the funky monkey
Expertise: Abstract Sculpture, visual storytelling, Innovative photography, Interpretive dance??
Occupation: Art Teacher
Message: message me
Website: visit my website
AIM:  Paragon Baka
Member Since:
4/20/2005
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| This past week I had two job interviews. The first was at Northridge High School. It's located in Middlebury, IN (about 45 minutes east of South Bend and where my brother and his family live). They're building a brand new high school, which will be pretty darn big and decked out with ALL the amenities. There are 4 art teachers at this school, with 4 or 5 art rooms. It's massive. The school system is great and it would be a very nice job to get.
The second interview was at Peru High School (Peru, IN), which is about an hour and a half North of Indy. I have never seen anything like this school. They have the largest private collection of Oriental pottery (Meng/Ching Dynasty type stuff) in Indiana. Not out of high schools...in the WHOLE state. They are 1 of 2 Indiana schools with an art gallery, primarily used for student work. They have a huge collection of original works by artists such as Dali, Picasso, and Miro. And they use these artworks to teach. Not looking at them through glass cases or anything like that. Getting up close and personal to show techniques, color, whatever. I about pooped myself. They have a group of art restoration experts come in every year to put on a bit of a workshop in their gallery. Students get to talk to them and find out how to make lots of money while working with art...I know, it sounds underhanded, but we need more restorers. Then there's the art program itself. It's divided between 2 teachers: the department chair handles the 2-D classes, claiming to hate clay. He has a large room with space for models. Often, his students are allowed to roam the downtown area in order to draw from life. This is the first time I've heard an art teacher talk about the importance of students drawing from life (not using photos). The other art teacher (possibly me...) is primarily a ceramics teacher. Now any of you from Messiah know how much I LOVED ceramics my senior year. For those who don't know, that was sarcasm. I hated ceramics. However, I've come to realize that it was probably due to my having to take it while I worked on my senior show in 2 concentrations. I don't HATE it. And if I got this job, I'd be able to teach however I wanted. So I could do a lot of handmade sculptural ceramics if I wanted. On top of all this, Peru High has on average a dozen Scholastic Award Winners in Art every year. Most schools (even ones twice as big) generally have 1 or 2 winners (if they're lucky). This one had 12 this year. And a junior came in first at the National level. A sophomore came in 3rd! It's nuts.
So needless to say, I WANT the Peru job. The Northridge job would be nice too, but the Peru one would be too good to pass up. I will find out sometime this week if I get a second interview at either of these schools. | | |
| I
realize I never post, but for the most part I've either had nothing to
post or I haven't wanted to share. Well I'm going to share now.
I'm
finally done with my schooling. I'm a licensed art teacher now. I'm
searching for a job. I'm open to anywhere in the country, but I'm
searching mainly in Indiana for my first year because it's less of a
hassle with my license and my references are known throughout the
state. I've now sent out about 16 resumes and applications and haven't
heard word one about any of them. I'm frustrated and just a bit
depressed. It doesn't help that I'm still looking for a summer job here
in Muncie. Subbing got me through May, but that was it.
So yeah,
I'm not in a good place. I've got an oil painting I could continue
working on, a watercolor series I'm halfway through, or even a novel I
could continue writing. But I just haven't had the heart to do anything
with them.
On the plus side, the other day I had a stroke of
inspiration while driving in my truck. An idea for a story that I'd
like to write as a short story came to mind. If I can crank this out,
I'm going to submit it for publication/short story contests. Tonight, I
created an outline for it so that I wouldn't forget the idea and could
flesh it out. I'm putting the outline below and would love any input
you have for me.
Echoes
• Ghost story
• Town becomes haunted by shadows of dead relatives
• Haunting happens because the number of deaths in the town has gone beyond the number of births, giving power to the spirits.
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One family is affected more than most. They have lost grandparents, a
daughter, and three cousins. The ghosts (echoes) seem drawn to the
father especially. The family thinks it is because of all the suffering
he has had to endure.
• In reality, a local priest has been
killing townspeople in the deluded notion that he is going to bring
about hell on earth in order to purify humanity of their sins.
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Most echoes are merely trying to communicate with their loved ones, but
as the priest kills more people, they are being corrupted and causing
harm.
• The echoes only appear in the corner of people’s eyes until they are about to kill their victim.
• When the echoes kill someone, their power and the corruption of the echoes grows stronger.
• The father’s dead relatives struggle to avoid the corruption and aid the father in solving the mystery.
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The father tries to hide his family somewhere safe while he goes to
confront the priest. While the family hides, they are attacked by
echoes.
• The father confronts the priest at his church, which
has become an unholy, hellish place. He has to fight through some of
the worst echoes and is losing until his dead family members come to
his aid. They fight off the corrupted echoes until the priest brings
them into himself.
• The priest becomes somewhat demonic and
attacks the father. He knocks the father around the church. The father
makes his way to the balcony. When it looks as though he is about to
die, his dead relatives distract the priest just enough for the father
to tackle him. Both plummet off of the balcony and land on the main
level. The father hits the seat of a pew, which breaks beneath him. The
priest falls across the stone altar, dying on impact.
• Upon the
priest’s death, the echoes are released from his body and are returned
to their uncorrupted forms. The priest’s echo rises from his body and
is dragged to hell by the released echoes.
• Once the father defeats the priest, the echoes attacking the family disappear.
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The father slowly gets up and staggers out of the church. When he gets
outside, all of the echoes created by the priest are there. His family
tells him they are proud of him, but have to go.
• The echoes
walk into the church and suddenly it collapses in on itself. The father
is joined by his family as they walk away from the destruction.
•
Once they return home, they find a note on the floor that simply says
“Thank You.” It is signed by the father’s father. Out of the corner of
his eye, the father thinks he sees his parents standing in the mirror
and smiling at him. When he looks, no one is there. | | |
| Well things have changed since the last post. Once things are certain, I'll disclose more, but right now, I'm very positive. | | |
| 1 week. That's all I seem to be good for. For once, I'd like a girl to view me NOT as a brother. Especially when I'm crazy about said girl. I think I'm going to go bury my head in a pillow now.
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| 4 months since my last post......oops. It's been a crazy semester. I'll give a short academic recap before getting to what this post is really about.
I have been doing my teaching practicum this semester. This isn't student teaching, but rather the step that comes before it. The semester is split in half, the first part for middle school, and the second for high school. For each one, we go into the school for either one or two periods and observe the teaching, help out with the students and the lesson, and then teach 1-3 days...normally. In my case, it didn't turn out quite how it should have.
In the middle school, I was fortunate enough to be in the classroom of a teacher that is said by multiple people to be the best art teacher in Eastern Indiana. So great yeah? Well she also happened to have a student teacher this semester. So I didn't get to see much teaching from her. I ended up teaching about 5-6 days worth of lessons because of weather messing up our schedule. My students created large outdoor madonnari (Italian chalk drawings) of people in Venetian festival masks (They had just finished making masks of their own). It rained 2 times in the week we did this, so everything got changed and retimed etc. But they looked great and we celebrated with an Italian festival of our own
For the high school, our class got told we couldn't go to the school that had already made plans for us to come. So the professor scrambled to find a replacement SCHOOL and we ended up at Burris, Ball State's Laboratory School. At this, all 5 art ed majors did a collective groan. There are 5 of us in the class and 1 art teacher at Burris. Not only that, but while my middle school teacher was one of the best, this one is one of the worst. Laziness does not make for good teaching. So I've been team teaching with my friend Nathan Fry for the last 4 weeks. The first week, we observed and helped out (pretty much did the teaching) and then for the past 3 weeks we've done all the teaching. We're supposed to be done there as we only have one more week of classes in the semester, but nope, we'll be back for perhaps the entire week. But why you ask? Because I'm the insane person that came up with our mega lesson: stop-motion silhouette animation.
Another art ed friend of mine, Leslie, did this project for her senior Honors thesis and it turned out really cool. I watched her do a lot and have done SOME stop motion of my own, so I thought I'd try it out on high schoolers. Too bad I didn't take into account that this class had become lazy thanks to a teacher that didn't teach any content and told everyone she didn't believe in deadlines. So getting a good portion of the class to work has been a challenge, but the past few days have been great. All but one group is already to the computers to actually animate, using hundreds of photos they took, manipulating hinged characters they drew and cut out. The last group should finish up on Monday and join them on the computers. Once they're done and I've figured out how to compress them all into one file, I'll post it on youtube and link it here. They're animating Little Red Cap (Little Red Riding Hood).
But now for what this post is really about. As of about 2-2:30 this morning, I am dating the girl of my dreams. Her name is Megan, she is 23, an art ed major in my class, though finishing a year behind me, slightly shorter than me, with long curly brown hair. I've personally liked her pretty much since I first saw her in an educational psychology class last Spring and instantly became great friends with her from April on. Some of you may recall, but she's also the same girl I asked out, yet crashed and burned with at the beginning of the summer. Who knows, maybe there's even a post here about that. It's been that long. It's just starting out, so no labels or anything like that. But I'm happy. Happier than I've been in a long time.
Now I'm going back to bed since I've only gotten 4 hours of sleep or so. More news when news arrives.
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