In the Beginning...

Summer, 2003

In the fall of 1982, I was finishing my first book, a 44-chapter survival manual (left) for the new teachers in the University of New Mexico’s Graduate Intern program, for which I was the coordinator. Hand-typed, the cover “art” created from rub-on letters and a graphic from an ancient Mad magazine, which eventually became my company’s first logo, the product was a little rough. (The handbook above is actually the second-generation version with a glossy, printed cover! The original came with a plain manilla card-stock cover. Seriously.)

I was working full-time at the University when I started this business, though by 1985, I was no longer even teaching classes there. In 1986, I was joined by my husband, Jerry Tereszkiewicz, who left the construction work (which basically paid the bills and kept us fed while I was getting the business off the ground) to work with me full-time. (Original logo, right.)

Meanwhile, I concentrated my time on my writing and building my speaking resume! Between traveling, writing, distributing not only my own books and resources, but also about 300 other resources from 50 other publishers— plus learning all the “business stuff” you don’t generally pick up when learning to become a teacher, the confusion and challenges I saw in my logo (above) seemed particularly appropriate.

Lots of movement and growth those first few years. Starting the business in a corner of the den and eventually taking over a second bedroom, we soon built a separate, semi-permanent 12' x 24' building and a storage shed in the back yard. By 1995, though, even that space was feeling a little tight! We moved to our current location in October 1995 and took over most of the downstairs (and a large portion of the garage) with the business.

I was, at that time, beginning to do more international work, taking a whole lot of computer classes, and writing a new book every year or two. But our next big priority was getting online! After hiring two different people to create my site who followed through on the work they had promised to do, I figured I may as well just do it myself. A new ISP and web host, and a few intense lessons with GoLive (the web-development software I used to create my first site) and I was on my way.

The image on the left is a screen shot of my home page as I’m typing this. I’ve switched to a dedicated Web hosting service, and will continue pointing visitors to the old site until this new one— including the page you’re currently reading— is complete!

This site worked well, but by the beginning of 2002, I felt like it needed a bit of a makeover. A new logo, new colors, new layout and a few Web design features I hadn’t known about previously entered the picture. Looking back on the old site, I’m grateful for the help I had to get started. It really worked and, to me, is still a very nice graphic design. So I guess I needed to include this page, and these graphics, to honor what was.

Interestingly, after years of building the business up, I find myself now slowing down, walking a narrower path, and being a lot more focused in the work I’m doing. To see where this path leads, check on what I’ve been up to from time to time on this site. It’ll be a good place to see what new kinds of history I’m making!

Fall, 2008

I’ve had a blog running on this site for 12 years now, and now have a new version of this site to present to the world. I “finished” this history five years ago, just as I was about to launch the second version of the site. It looked like this image on the right and was designed to eventually evolve into nine separate sections, one each for early childhood, elementary, middle school, high school and alternative, counselors and mental health professionals, school administrators and staff development coordinators, parents and caregivers, the media, and the general public. I also had links for special education professionals and beginning teachers.

Very ambitious intentions, indeed.

But once I started putting the sections together, with individual indexes for each, a couple of things happened. First of all, I realized that almost all of the material I had was almost equally appropriate for anyone working in a school environment (including beginning teachers and special education teachers) and in most cases, for parents and other caregivers as well. Second, almost everything I added fell into this category, being relevant for anyone working with kids of any age.

Third, and most serious, as I added links and other information to the page, I ended up with three separate navigation avenues, which made getting around the site confusing and difficult. (I had always prided myself on my site being simple, clear, and easy to navigate, and it got to the point where even I didn’t remember where certain things were or how to get to them!)

Recently, I hired someone to do an analysis of my site and give me a hand with search engine optimization and it turned out that despite the wealth of free and valuable information on the site, and despite its longevity, the site was coming up with the worst possible page rank and frankly, not getting anywhere near the traffic it should.

So, I started looking at ways to make improvements and as so often happens, I ended up in this “well, as long as I’m changing this...” loop and ended up with a total renovation!

I am following suggestions of someone whose opinion I value to move in this current direction, but keep in mind that the revision to the second version of the site followed suggestions that ended up not really serving me, so I suppose it remains to be seen what happens now.

Either way, there is one more thing that I had to consider before undertaking the overhaul of more than 600 pages: The second site was constructed using frames and a whole lot of tables which, as one young designer said, is so 2003!

Sheesh! So FINE!! I’ve learned some more CSS (cascading style sheets) to create a more current version of the site structure. Please don’t even bother to tell me how outdated it already is, OK? I’m keeping up as well as I can!

So the history of this site now takes us up to my being about a third of the way through its third rendition. Unlike the last overhaul, in which I waited until the site was done to launch the entire thing, I have already uploaded the finished pages, so what we have at this moment is a hodge-podge of old stuff and new.

The old color-coded frames (with the beautiful composite photos for each) are gone. Perhaps I’ll add screen shots of the pages to some future gallery, but their presence just complicated things and they really don’t fit anywhere in the current navigation scheme. And frankly, I don’t believe that many people were using them anyhow.

I’ve renamed a few things, and moved a few others, which will be a problem for anyone who has bookmarked these pages, but I’m hoping that people will head for my new home page and find their way from there.

In the meantime, there may well come a time for me to turn this site over to someone much more technically savvy than I, but for the moment, this is something I enjoy doing and hey—it’s FREE STUFF, lots of it, so please bear with me during the renovation and enjoy it for what it is, in any way this material may be helpful to you, your kids, your colleagues, your family, or your school.

Winter, early 2012

This is one of those pages I created and sort-of forgot. I came across it when I did the site over a few years ago and now that I’m thinking of tweaking the existing design, here I am again. (Since I didn’t bother to put up a picture of the last site revision, here it is on the left.)

So this is a good time to reflect on the growth and development of this company since my last entry here, because a lot of history has happened in the past three-plus years.

For one thing, Jerry officially retired. His work— primarily fulfilling book orders (which have slowed down considerably in the past few years) and maintaining inventory— had reduced enough that we didn’t even bother putting him on the books in 2010, so an official retirement just made sense. When things get busy and I need a hand, I recruit his talents, but now his status is “helpful spouse” rather than “business manager.”

I turned 60 last April and as many of my former colleagues had long since left their teaching positions, thoughts of retirement started dancing in my head, too. Funny, though, how quickly these ideas got crowded out by all kinds of new products and projects I suddenly wanted to do.

Much of this is detailed in my blogs, but to summarize some of the major changes that have occurred since the last update:

Books: I did three more books for Corwin— four if you count The Win-Win Classroom, which I didn’t even mention above. (It came out in 2008.) In addition to a Facilitator’s Guide, I wrote a book for beginning teachers (and the people who work with them) called Becoming a Win-Win Teacher, and more recently, edited a compilation of chapters from nine different books for Best of Corwin: Classroom Management project.

“Pads” on the Back Templates: As we started to run low on our stock of “Pads” on the Back, we decided to offer them as a downloadable template. I created the template in response to a request for a Spanish-language version and in the ensuing months, found people gracious enough to translate the template into their native language. (Well, I suppose that would not be exactly true for the Latin version, but you get my drift.) We initially charged $4.95 for the download, but then decided, in the spirit in which the product was developed, to simply offer them for free. To date, we have the template available in 24 languages and I continue to scout translators for more.

eProducts: I started offering more and more of our other products as downloads. In addition to putting the contents of the TeacherTapes online as an mp3 download, you can now get The Book of Article Reprints as well as individual articles in PDF form. Look for more ePubs, maybe even in eReader formats as I figure (or farm) this process out, as well as audio and, eventually, video files to become available on this site.

Spectrum Podcasts: This project has taken over my life (not to mention the back room of my office). With support from my sponsors and friends at Energize Students, I have, to date, recorded six shows. I have another show scheduled to record this week and about a dozen other guests lined up (so far). I published two of the shows on this site just yesterday, and will have the third up before I go to bed tonight.

Newsletter: Another just-starting-now project. I finally got my mailing list sorted out and exported and am working with book group friend and marketing expert, Lynne Marcus, to set up a regular monthly newsletter. I’m hoping to get the first one out by the beginning of March.

Web site v3.2: I am in the process of hiring a prospective Web designer. I’ve talked with her on the phone and she’s looked at my site and wants to work with me. It doesn’t sound like she’ll have any trouble fulfilling the wishes on my wish list and depending on what she proposes when we connect later this week, this may actually be Web site version 4.0 (although I’m honestly hoping to keep a lot of the features from this current incarnation). I will try to remember to post a screen shot of the new site whenever it launches, presumably soon.

So much for retirement. Ha!

Check my blogs and what’s new for current developments, as I probably won’t be back here until or unless something very big changes or happens, and hopefully that won’t be for quite some time!

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