How is this year going to be different from every other year you’ve taught before? Do you have a specific plan to ensure that it will be? Here’s a simple suggestion that I aim to implement in my own teaching this year. Ready?

Plan
Each Sunday, I am going to think about what has happened in recent weeks and identify one weak area that needs to be addressed. It doesn’t have to be the biggest problem area. In fact, sometimes targeting a seemingly insignificant problem that I know I can rectify helps me gain confidence to attack the bigger, more ominous ones later on. Perhaps I can tackle one specific element of a larger problem area. The whole “one bite at a time” philosophy.

News flash. If you don’t work hard to make this year drastically better than the ones in the past, it’s not going to be drastically better.

“Wait a minute here, Mr. Joel Blogger Guy! My classroom management skills and my teaching ability and my paperwork prowess are all good enough as they are.” I ask you, do your students deserve good enough or do they deserve amazing? Do you deserve good enough or do you deserve amazing?

Make this school year amazing!

** Yes, I took that picture at Bowman Lake in Glacier National Park in Montana two weeks ago with my iPhone 4S. Here’s a link to the full size, unfiltered photograph.

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Joel Wagner

Joel Wagner (@sywtt) began teaching band in 2002. Though he had a lot of information, his classes were out of control. He found himself tired, frustrated, disrespected by students, lonely, and on the brink of quitting. He had had enough. He resigned from his school district right before spring break of his second year and made it his personal mission to learn to be a great teacher. So You Want To Teach? is the ongoing story of that quest for educational excellence.