Alicia Ball is a 2006 graduate of Celina High School, who after university, returned to Celina, and is now passionate about english and media arts. She originally brought the idea of the “Bulldog Beat” into high school, from her middle school experience, “When I was in middle school, there was a class that everybody had to take with Mr. Schelich and we made a new show weekly for the middle school, and I really enjoyed it. Um, not necessarily the technical part of it, but the communication part of it where it tied a lot of the stuff that we had going on at school together.” Along with being passionate about the class itself, she encourages students to take the class, “In this day and age? PR or your public reputation is a big deal even though we are a school and that type of thing shouldn’t matter, but it does, and I talk often about having a bridge between community and school and I think at this moment in time that bridge for us needs to be strengthened with things like, you know, the levy and, our current community division over how the school should be run or handled.” When asked, Ball commented on the ups and downs of managing the class “The best part is that I get to see people be creative. I get to see different groups be celebrated, and we get to kind of show off what we have here to the community. I like that part. The worst part is that I’m not great with downtime, so having a classroom where everybody’s doing lots of different stuff and there’s lots of chaos, that’s the worst part for me,” and the stress, “I think the fact that we have one episode a week and that quick turnaround where we decide on Monday what we’re doing
and it has to be done by Friday is difficult.” Ball is definitely an overall amazing teacher with her strong suit, “I know it sounds really cheesy, but relationships, since it’s not a super academic course and there is a lot of that downtime, I get to know everybody really well and that I think works inside the classroom.” Although a lot of students wouldn’t have the class run any other way, Ball commented on having a different teacher in mind, “Probably. Um, I think Mr. Sinder would be excellent because he has a technology background. He’d be my first choice.”
