My name is Sandra Barker. I work at
Thomas Jefferson High School.
My love is teaching English, but my
second love is directing the spring
musicals which I've done here now for 24
years.
I think the main reason that I do this, is that
we are teachers and we have a
love of the theater and of musical theater.
I want them to leave here with a
love and appreciation of what goes on in the stage.
I want them to leave here with
wonderful memories because a lot of the
kids say that's what they remember about
high school. It's not their English class,
it's not reading Romeo and Juliet with
Mrs. Barker, but they remember the things
that happened during that spring musical
when they were here. Most of them have
these shirts still for years and years
and years like me, 24 years of t-shirts I
had and they do too. So it becomes part
of their high school and part of their
lives during their teenage years. 
What more can you ask for?
The t-shirts kind of became a representation of the musical. The kids wear this with pride, and
they won't only wear this this year. If
you walked around the hall today you
would see students with their Mamma Mia shirts on.
It becomes part of our tradition because every year we wear, on the days
preceding the first performance, we wear the shirts that represent the seniors' four years.
So we go back to when they were Freshmen, and on the Monday we wear that shirt.
On on the Tuesday we wear the shirt when they were Sophomores, on the Wednesday, Juniors.
And then this becomes the day of the performance, our kind of "Here we are, we're ready to go!"
We get a picture taken every year in this that hangs in its glorious spot and represents the musical.
So it becomes something that really is very meaningful to everybody, as well as the school.
We just started displaying them, 
and everybody loved them.
It's beautiful. It's colorful. It has
all these great pictures and dates of the show.
It's like a beautiful painting on the wall all of them together.
And you can see that. That's the thing.
That's why I keep going back to Excel because I certainly could get shirts cheaper.
I could get shirts that would be very
simple but they're not the quality,
they're not the color. I'm proud of them
because I feel like I have a piece in
designing and though this year I kind of
came and I said I'm not sure what I want,
but this is kind of the idea. So I just
had, this time, a bunch of little sketches
I had done that afternoon and we just
started putting it together.
None of the rest of this was decided, it's
the artists that give this life.
They're the ones, they see it. So where I
have a vision of what I know I want
onstage, they seem to have the vision of
what the shirt's going to look like.
I could never do this.
I could never never do it, and nobody
else can. As I said, I have worked with
other t-shirt companies and when you see
the difference in the shirts and the
quality. We didn't talk about that.
Because again, as I said, I've been
wearing mine for 24 years and it still
looks the same.
Still the same.
The shirts are a way of advertising for us. 
This year not only did I sell a shirt to
every single student who was involved in
the musical, and that means all our tech
kids bought one, all of the pit, all of the
cast, all of the adult members,
parents bought them, so it really becomes a part
of making us an extended family too.
It just lets us tie the whole show
together. The decorations and stuff that
we use. We decorate all the lobbies, all
the hallways, you know all of our kids
are represented on the walls and again
these are the things that are in it.
The crown. The guitar. The sailboat. Those are the things that follow through.
So the shirt really does end up you know
tying everything together for us.
Every year I go back to Excel Sportswear. I have a lot of other companies who are
trying to get the business and would
love to and very actively pursue but I
have been delighted with Excel because
they put my vision into a work of art
that becomes an important aspect of our
show, of our musical family,
of our high school, and of our memories.
It's our own little painting on the wall.
