Monthly Archives: January 2020

Graphic Design Project

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The assigning of this project came in the midst of one of the most chaotic times in a teacher’s life- end of term. On top of finishing grades for 150 students and dealing with parent and student inquiries about how to improve grades, as a school we decided this would be a great time to hold a college and career fair for our 8th grade and AVID students. Being the AVID co-coordinator, I had the responsibility of organizing the event.

The event turned out amazing. We had 30+ professionals, counselors from our high schools, and 9 colleges/education programs. The kids enjoyed it and were really appreciative for the opportunity, with the exception of one who stated it was far too stressful to think about the future (adulthood will be a fun experience for that kid). I had a bunch of people ask what AVID was, so it gave me inspiration for my graphic design project: make a graphic representation of what AVID is.

AVID is program aimed at closing the achievement gap by giving kids the college readiness skills for success within the global society. Recently they’ve been shifting to try to include more career focus, since we realize not every kid is destined to go to college (not because they’re not capable, just because not everyone should be expected to take the same path).

Originally I was intending to use photos from our events to show what AVID is like. I received a lot of photos my coworkers took at past AVID events. None of them really jumped out at me; they didn’t make the program seem exciting. I started from scratch with the idea that AVID is a path you can choose to take.

I used Creative Commons to find clipart images of a crossroads sign and tried to find a branched path. I had no luck finding a path, but did find a nice clipart of a dead branched tree, so used that as a base for a path. I decided to have the path go upwards since it felt like more of a journey forward that way. The path is also shifted to the right side of the page to follow the rule of thirds. I took the main components that makeup AVID and placed them along the path so kids could see what being a part of AVID would entail. All pieces were written in the same font and the same color, the similarity suggesting that they are all connected. The colors used for the main components are AVIDs colors: blue and gold. For the other components, neutral colors were used so they didn’t distract from the message of AVID.

After making this graphic I double-checked the requirements and noticed that it said it must include three images. I got a little stressed that images means photos, so I began to think that the design didn’t meet requirements. I made a second design project with photos just in case. I don’t think it follows as many design rules, and overall I feel like it got to be too busy looking. My husband likes to constantly tell me I’m an overachiever, so you bet that I’m throwing it on here just in case the first one doesn’t make the cut.

Photo Permissions for 1st design:

Crossroads sign: “jalan persimpangan” is licensed under CC0 1.0 

Tree: “branch” is licensed under CC0 1.0 

Graduation Cap: “kolej” is licensed under CC0 1.0 

Briefcase: “office” is licensed under CC0 1.0 

Photos for the 2nd design were all taken by my self or given to me with permissions by my co-workers J. DeLazzari & D. Hendrickson.

Photoshop Fun

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Below are the tutorials that we were asked to complete for the Photoshop assignment.

Introduction to Layers Tutorial

Adjustment Layers Tutorial

Layer Masks Tutorial

Text & Effects Tutorial

Cutouts & Blending Modes Tutorial

Who Am I?

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My name is Kacee Kukull. I live in Washington state with my wonderful husband and our fur children.

The last few years of my life have been spent working as a middle school teacher, trying to find ways to engage students in learning and spark their interest in science and engineering. On top of my traditional classroom responsibilities, I also coach our school’s FIRST Lego League team and run the Makerspace. Anything that our school does that is science related, you’ll find me playing a part in it somehow. I’m also heavily involved in our school’s AVID program, playing the role as co-coordinator for the last 4 years.

Because I clearly don’t have enough on my plate, I recently decided to go back to school to get my Masters in Molecular Biosciences. Getting my Masters will help me advance in my profession. While I love teaching, I don’t know if it will be my passion forever, which is why I chose to pursue a Masters in science instead of education. This gives me the freedom to jump back into various science-based careers if I want to. The decision to get my Masters is also what has led me to the creation of this blog. It’s purpose is to act as a portfolio for my COM561 course.

If you don’t find me working on school related things, then you’ll catch me reading or baking. My husband and I also spend a fair amount of our time building Lego sets or playing board games and video games.

Topic of Focus…

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For this class, we were asked to pick a topic of focus for our work. I am going for an obvious choice: education.

When I was little and asked what I wanted to be when I got older, I would tell people that I didn’t know what I wanted to do, but I was going to move far away and make a lot of money. When my college entrance essay asked me the same question I knew that a response of “IDK, but I want money” wouldn’t be good enough. I couldn’t come up with a good answer to the question, so I did what every teenager does and asked my friends. I remember asking a lot of people, but the only answer I remember came from Brittany. She looked at me like I was dumb for asking and simply stated, “I always assumed you’d be a teacher.” I clearly remember laughing at her.

For lack of a better idea, I followed Brittany’s advice and decided to go into teaching. Starting off was rough and I don’t think I did very well. However, the more time that I spent in a classroom with students, the more I got to know them. Here’s the tricky thing about getting to know people, you get invested in them, in their well-being, and you start rooting for them to be successful. After years of this, teaching and education stopped being just a paycheck and it has become my passion. Here I am, 14 years later, 8 years deep into a career that I love.

“The future of the world is in my classroom today.”

Ivan Welton Fitzwater

The great thing about the topic of education is that everyone has some kind of connection to it or feelings about it. The downside is that almost everyone feels like they are an expert on it since they have spent some form of time in a classroom (let me assure you, sitting at a desk as a student doesn’t make you an expert on education).

I don’t know exactly what aspect of education my work will focus on. Maybe it will be about student engagement, maybe teaching strategies, maybe sometimes venting about the state that it’s in. I guess we’ll just have to wait and see.