Kansas City with MHS Students

I brought four of my students to Kansas City to compete in the National Skills USA Championships for Broadcast News. We flew from Salt Lake City on Monday and will be returning on Saturday. The weather is great and we are having lots of fun with little sleep. My students finished their competition this morning and won't find out the results until the never-ending awards ceremony which will be held on Friday.


The convention center entrance where we competed has huge coil sculptures by Jun Kaneko. I love his work! When I was teaching Ceramics, I would teach my students all about Jun. Later we went to the Crown Plaza today and there was an Alexander Calder stabile (stationary mobile) outside. There was an amazing sculpture hanging in the Hyatt Regency hotel where the dance was tonight. Tomorrow I am taking my students to an an art museum. All this art exposure is bringing back memories of the passion I once had for creating art. I want to make something! Now that I am teaching all video production classes, I think I am missing that connection to the art world that I once had.

Six days is a long time to be away from Moffett Manor. I miss the Crazies. I missed out on Amina's soccer game today. They tied 1-1. I missed out on taking Felicia and Amina to Camp Kiesel yesterday. I missed out on Sadie's Young Women's activity. I'm sure that I have missed out on a thousand hilarious Maisy moments. Most of all, I miss Melanie. It will be nice to come home. But don't get me wrong, I am having a blast. I love visiting other cities.

My students keep me laughing. This may not be as funny in writing, but today we walked into a candy store and the girl working there explained that everything was $7.50 per pound. So I asked her if they had cotton candy. Can you imagine how much cotton candy you could get for $7.50? Anyway, I asked and couldn't stop laughing. I was crying, squeaking, hurting in the gut, etc. Good times. -Ryan