The cover, she is finished

I have been doggedly working on finishing the 2010 yearbook cover for Ballyhoo Schools (our yearbook is preK through 12th grade, not just high school), and I think I might finally have finished it. I like to include a photo of each member of the senior class, and the final idea for how to do this came to me in a dream about a week ago (this is how many of my ideas happen, for better or worse).

My yearbook staff decided on "What a trip" as the theme for the yearbook, and I had wanted to incorporate the highway/freeway theme because Interstate 35 is so central to our lives here. I photographed signs all over the area, much to the consternation of people who gave me very strange looks as I pulled over to take pictures. Honest, I tried to stay out of traffic whenever possible. The time I parked along the side of the frontage road and aimed my camera into oncoming interstate traffic, though, seemed to get the most reaction. I probably won't do that again anytime soon. I'd rather not be the cause of a major wreck.

Besides, I didn't end up using those photos, but instead chose to use the toy wooden cars as the vehicles for the cover. I thought it was much more appropriate, since these are our little kids all grown up and leaving the nest, but they're still little kids to us, et cetera.

I know, it's an unusual cover and probably doesn't look like any other yearbook cover you ever saw. Since when do I produce something expected? Boring? Staid? Sorry, that just goes against my very nature. It also goes against my nature to choose one of the "stock" yearbook covers that Jostens provides. Yuck. No, I believe in plastering every available surface with creativity and quirkiness whenever possible. My classroom is prima facie evidence of this, in that I literally cover my walls with stuff to look at. I have always done this, instinctively; some educational philosophers advocate minimalist classroom environs to decrease distraction, but for people like me, I need to have stuff to look at to help me focus. Counter-intuitive, perhaps, but true.

Now to get down to the business of actually finishing the INSIDE of the yearbook.