Another lesson learned: when you are contributing to a school, make sure that you tell admin about every single thing you do, especially if is in a digital form that can be emailed wherever without a credit line. Sometimes even when you tell them you still get screwed.

A few months ago, I drew portraits of several students and gave them to the students as gifts. Through a series of emails, which involved my permission to publish one of the portraits (with credit) in the yearbook, this same image ended up being used in the school’s WASC report without permission nor credit. Because I was let go and not told why, I am a tad bitter. I found it highly distasteful that they would use my work in this way, showcasing how great our school and its teachers are. Especially without asking me. I sent the admin a “cease and desist” email that also asked for them to give me credit for my work. I had, in fact, told everyone about the portraits right after I had done them, so admin could not please ignorance. After a week, they did email the campus, apologized, and gave me credit.

In another example from right before I was let go, I spent hours designing a T-shirt for our “Every 15 Minutes” event this week. I received thanks from the screen printing teacher, which was great. However, admin never thanked me. And now I’ve got here in my hands a program for today’s assembly. It has my T-shirt design featured on the cover. It has a section for acknowledgments and thanks to everyone who helped make “Every 15 Minutes” happen. I’ll let you guess who wasn’t thanked. If you guessed “Dawn Pedersen”, you are correct.

What do you think I should do?

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