On The Brink Of Quitting Inspiration by Joel Wagner - June 25, 2008July 1, 201010 Lisa writes: I googled "bitter about teaching" and came up with your blog. I was recently let go from a school I busted my a$$ in for a whole year (my first year) - constant criticism, cattiness, and pointing out and embellishing the negative things I had done while minimizing the positive (all the while they were telling me to stay positive!). She concludes her email: I just wanted to let you know that your blog picked me up a little bit. I still have a lot of healing to do, but I'm glad that I'm not the only person that this has happened to. What an awesome thing! In case you missed the story, here are a few articles
Urgent Personal Finance Advice Personal by Joel Wagner - June 21, 2008July 1, 20101 This public service announcement is brought to you by Seth Godin. Read it at once.
A Community Is Developing Here! Blogging & Technology by Joel Wagner - June 19, 2008July 1, 20104 If you haven't been keeping up with the comments on here, shame on you. Fortunately, I have been. Let me fill you in. You see, I have installed a new plugin that allows people to reply to comments that others make. The reply will include a link directly to the comment that was left. It's working out pretty well for me. I have noticed that as I reply to some of the comments, many of you have subscribed to receive other comments. And so my replies go to your inbox. And then sometimes people reply back. It's working out well. Recently, Stephanie posted a comment on my article No Child Left Behind: Doomed To Fail? In her comment, she suggested
Why Do We Do What It Is That We Do? General by Joel Wagner - June 19, 2008July 1, 20101 My blog has been running on a fairly regular basis now for over a year. I have a wealth of information stored in the archives here. So often, some of the great writing of the past has gone overlooked. One of the most common reasons for this is that the majority of you who are reading this didn’t even subscribe to this blog 5 months ago. Some of the best content I’ve written on the blog was put online last spring or summer. But it so often gets overlooked. Some of it needs to be rehashed from time to time as new readers come along. I have implemented some related posts plugins and some other techniques as well as trying
The Music Education Blog Carnival Music Education by Joel Wagner - June 17, 2008July 1, 20104 On July 1st, 2008 the very first Music Education Blog Carnival was featured on So You Want To Teach? This is something that Joseph Pisano over at MusTech.Net and I had been discussing for a couple of months, and we finally got around to starting it up. What is it? Much like the Carnival of Education, the Music Education Blog Carnival features blog articles from around the blogosphere. These articles all focus on music education and topics that might remotely be interesting to music educators. What do I do? I want to encourage anyone who has an article somewhere in their blog's archives that might relate to submit it. It doesn't have to be a recent article even.
07-08: What To Change Next Year General by Joel Wagner - June 17, 2008June 25, 20162 As we begin the summer vacation, I am looking back on what went really well this year, what didn't work so well, and what needs to change for next year. Below are some of the changes that I intend to implement next year: Change the focus - Winning is not the only thing that matters. In fact, winning is absolutely fun, but so is doing something well. One of my college professors was a big proponent of the concept that you teach music for the sake of teaching music. He said that when you do it right, the results will follow. I never earned a sweepstakes trophy in all my years of band, even though I was in a really
07-08: What Didn’t Work Well General by Joel Wagner - June 15, 2008July 1, 20105 As we begin the summer vacation, I am looking back on what went really well this year, what didn’t work so well, and what needs to change for next year. Below are some of the negatives about this year: Lack of social life - While not entirely true, and things have changed for the positively since I began playing in a mariachi in April. But I still notice that I am far away from my family and many of my friends before I moved down here. Even after being in South Texas for four years, I find that my social life is limited to time spent with other band directors, and a small handful of church friends. Maybe that's
Reading Comic General by Joel Wagner - June 15, 2008July 1, 20100 Scott Walker over at The English Teacher has been building up a little collection of comics he has drawn during staff development sessions (and a few others). I like his work, and enjoy reading his blog even when it has words and no pictures. I am featuring one of his comics a week here on So You Want To Teach? once a week (every Sunday sounds like a good plan) until I run out of them, or until he complains and asks me to stop sending people to his blog. I highly encourage you to go spend some time exploring his blog in the mean time! Leave him some encouraging comments also!
The Ultimate Stress Reduction Stress Reduction by Joel Wagner - June 14, 2008July 1, 20105 When all else fails...
No Child Left Behind Doomed To Fail? General by Joel Wagner - June 11, 2008June 19, 20168 A reader recently emailed me and pointed me to a recent article on Time.com regarding No Child Left Behind. She wanted my take on the article, so here goes... To begin with, I notice that the article is written by Claudia Wallis, a writer of incredible credentials. This is a great start. The article begins: There was always something slightly insane about No Child Left Behind (NCLB), the ambitious education law often described as the Bush Administration's signature domestic achievement. I understand this view, but to me it comes across as sounding much like every single faculty meeting I have ever been in that discussed NCLB and its "ridiculous expectations for the students." Every time I hear this, I laugh to myself. I
Top 50 Edublogs? Blogging & Technology by Joel Wagner - June 11, 2008July 1, 20100 The conventional wisdom from professional bloggers is to come up with a regular posting frequency and to stick to it. If you post once a day normally, don't do more than that. If you post Once a week, don't do more than that. Also don't do less. Well, it's summer. I am home a bit more now and actually getting a chance to read some blogs finally again. Other teachers are home more now too. So I see some cool stuff that I want to share. I'm going to throw the conventional blogging wisdom out the window for now and post whenever I dang well feel like it! Who's with me here? :) That being said, I will continue with
07-08: What Worked Well General by Joel Wagner - June 11, 2008July 1, 20100 As we begin the summer vacation, I am looking back on what went really well this year, what didn’t work so well, and what needs to change for next year. Below are some of the positives about this year: Remaining calm - Despite circumstances this year, with the other band director having a stroke and all, I was able to stay calm most of the time. I lost my temper a few times, but it was nothing compared to my previous years of teaching. A lot of this comes from stress reduction measures I put into place, as well as growing up. Doing my job without complaining - I complained a bit on here and to friends, but never
07-08: A Year In Review General by Joel Wagner - June 10, 2008May 29, 20160 As the school year comes to a close, and before the summer gets into full swing, I am reviewing the 2007-2008 school year in my mind. This review is broken into three articles What Worked Well What Didn't Work Well What To Change Next Year At the end of July, I will revisit these and come up with some plans to ensure that things run more smoothly in the 2008-2009 school year. I did this last year also. Go read 06-07: A Year In Review here.
Student Expectations Comic General by Joel Wagner - June 8, 2008July 1, 20100 Scott Walker over at The English Teacher has been building up a little collection of comics he has drawn during staff development sessions (and a few others). I like his work, and enjoy reading his blog even when it has words and no pictures. I am featuring one of his comics a week here on So You Want To Teach? once a week (every Sunday sounds like a good plan) until I run out of them, or until he complains and asks me to stop sending people to his blog. I highly encourage you to go spend some time exploring his blog in the mean time! Leave him some encouraging comments also!
Minds of Students Comic General by Joel Wagner - June 1, 2008July 1, 20101 Scott Walker over at The English Teacher has been building up a little collection of comics he has drawn during staff development sessions (and a few others). I like his work, and enjoy reading his blog even when it has words and no pictures. I am featuring one of his comics a week here on So You Want To Teach? once a week (every Sunday sounds like a good plan) until I run out of them, or until he complains and asks me to stop sending people to his blog. I highly encourage you to go spend some time exploring his blog in the mean time! Leave him some encouraging comments also!