This current school semester has been a little different for me. First of all, I'm referring to a time period as a "school semester", something usually reserved for students and teachers and not someone who works in Development & Communications. This semester, however, I have been teaching a Digital Journalism class to one of the students at HopeTree Academy.

  It has been quite an experience for me and I've loved every minute of it. I have been blessed with a student who is well behaved and eager to learn. I have learned patience when explaining how a complicated program works to someone with little prior knowledge of it. I have been humbled by being asked questions I don't know the answer to, only to find out the answer and learn something new myself.

  We color corrected old pictures with a horrible yellow background. We enhanced photos to make them more eye catching. We practiced photography, journalism, and design layout. We shared laughs, traded stories, and became frustrated when a program wouldn't do what we wanted it to do.

  Sure, the class takes time out of my day and I have to plan the rest of my work around it. I also have to prepare material for each class and follow a rough course outline. But it is so important to me to know that a student at HopeTree Academy has an option like this and can develop their interests. Certainly other schools have similar courses that teach similar skills, but nowhere else will a students be able to build a one-on-one relationship with a teacher and have hands-on experience that will take them to the next level.