See Highlights of 2003: Part 2 (June-December)
January 13, 2003
My Writing
I haven’t had anything solid on my plate since I finished Creating Emotionally Safe Schools, on December 31, 2000! I think I really needed a break after the challenges of that massive project, but I’ve written a couple of tentative first chapters for a possible new book to go along with my workshop on Dealing with Difficult Students. Stay tuned.
I also revised most of the articles we offer as reprints, particularly those written early in my writing career. Each article now has a 2003 copyright and in some instances, represents significant changes from the original—or even the previous—version.
New Products
In October, 2002, my friend and videographer, Jim Thompson accompanied me to Long Island, where we taped a 2-hour parent workshop for a truly fantastic audience. The video parent training is currently in the works and will be announced on this site as soon as it becomes available. (Update: The video ran into technical problems, but the audio is available on CD or as an mp3 download on this site.)
Our Other Products
We’ve spent the past year selling off the remaining inventory of books by authors other than myself. We came to this difficult decision as a result of several factors, including the release of my last book and a set of videos, and an enormous increase in my travel and bookings for speaking engagements, which made the logistics of setting up large book exhibits impossible. (Some workshop participants may remember the days when I arrived at a school with over 100 different books! No more! Airline restrictions, shipping costs, and consideration for my back have made this option untenable.)
Although we had planned to have returned all books to their publishers by the beginning of this school year, we decided to hold off until my new website is completed. As it is, I’m spending considerable time revising the Bookstore portion of this site, updating the availability of a constantly-shrinking inventory. Of course, my own resources (books, articles, audio tapes, videos and stationery items), will continue to be available on this site, as well as on the new site.
New Website
I’ve been a little tired of this website for a while and have been wrestling with a redesign for over a year now. At this point, all I can say is that I’m a little closer. I’d love to give a date as to when I hope to publish the new site but until I nail down a design and a template for the new pages, things are going slower than I’d like.
This is the one main disadvantage of the past year’s travel schedule. I’m finding that I need a stretch of time to do development kinds of things. Plus, I’ve taken a number of computer classes and immediately take off before I had a chance to really work with what I’ve learned. Add to that the learning curve with a new operating system and upgraded software and things have been a little too fragmented for me to make the kinds of progress I’d like.
The new site will feature new graphics, new colors, even a new logo. It will use “frames,” which mean that the navigation buttons (which are now hidden if you’ve scrolled down this far) will remain stationary (so you won’t have to scroll back up to the top of the page to get to another part of the site).
Additionally, the new site will be divided into different sections for different audiences. I’ll have specific pages for educators (possibly, or eventually, broken down by elementary, middle and secondary levels), beginning teachers, administrators and inservice coordinators, counselors and other mental-health practitioners, university and teacher training instructors, parents and other caregivers, the media and the general public.
I suspect, since so many of my resources deliberately apply to a variety of these groups, that the sections will be pretty similar, at least at first. The new site architecture, however, leaves room for group-specific additions of resources and links, and should save visitors a lot of unnecessary searching and browsing.
That’s the idea. Any further suggestions, please feel free to contact me.
Meanwhile, I will continue to maintain this site while the new site is in development, although big changes and additions are not likely to come during this time. If anybody wants me to post anything, do let me know, and I’ll do my best to accommodate.
My Studio Work
Another piece of my life that has suffered a bit from the travel schedule, though I’m still lugging my beads and knitting around with me. I’ve done a great number of other projects than those published in the gallery on the Father Sky Studios section of this site. Again, I probably won’t be updating these pages until well after the new site is established.
See Highlights of 2003: Part 2
© 2003, Dr. Jane Bluestein
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