Sorry, no April Fools Day jokes from me this year. But I am actually posting a little bit. Last night, I took my band to the UIL Concert and Sight-Reading contest and we got a Sweepstakes trophy. This means that at least two of the three judges for our concert program and two of the three judges for our sight-reading agreed that our band played superior and earned a first division. I’m so proud of them! Contact me via email and ask me for the link to the recordings.

I have done a ton of thinking about this blog lately and I am determined that I will once again enable comments soon. I have the old ones, but I am…

Carol Richtsmeier made me do it. She has pretty much shamed me (guilted me perhaps?) into blogging through my weight loss this year with her. I’m doing it because I want to run a 5K. She’s doing it because she’s tired of dragging along the extra baggage. Well, me too. She’s done all of the legwork and I’ll do some design work when I get a chance, but she’s set up a blog call Can Wii Do It? to track our progress. I suggested there might be others who would be interested in blogging through their journey (either with a Wii or without). If you are, she would probably be the person to contact since she’s doing most of the…

Today is the day. Thousands of new users will be presented with the opportunity to get their hands on Google Wave.

What is Google Wave?
Google Wave is a brand new technology that positions itself  as the way Email would have been made if it were invented today. (Watch the 1:20:12 long video clip)

Imagine a combination between Email, IM, Twitter, Facebook, and Skype all bundled into one. Now imagine it being drag-and-drop easy, live-updated, and being constantly improved. Then throw on top of that an eager community of developers seeking ways to make it even easier to use and more powerful.

Cool, but what does it look like?
I haven’t gotten my…

I got an email from a reader this morning and she sent told me that I might appreciate her latest blog post. She writes:

I read your blog.  I also write my own blog.  I started my blog when I wanted to quit.  I spent about a year thinking about that.  I realize now that I don’t want to quit anymore.  I thought maybe my latest blog about why I don’t want to quit anymore would be of interest to you or your readers.

So I jumped on over to check it out. What an inspiration it was, too! Her blog Teacher, I Don’t Get It has been up for a little less than a year. I was indeed impressed by her latest…

I don’t use a whole lot of social media outlets, but I know a lot of my readers do. Over the last few months, I have added a few things to make sharing SYWTT articles easier. I’ve also added some rating type things where you can tell me how bad (or good) an article is. I find that Facebook and Twitter are by far the websites I spend most of my time on when I’m online. In fact, I mostly use Facebook at home and Twitter on my iPhone while I’m out.

Up to this point, I have used them mostly for personal things. I have also noticed, however, that my use of Google Reader and other RSS type things…

“Welcome to education.”

“Deal with it!”

“Didn’t they teach you in college that you need to be flexible?”

‘What do you want me to do about it?”

“Wow, I wish I had it that good my first year!”

So you graduated and then spent all summer looking for a job. You got your job, get to the school, and suddenly the classes or students you have bear no real similarity to what they told you in the interview.

The good news is that you’re not alone. The bad news is that this is probably what you are going to be dealing with all year.

I recently got an email expressing a similar situation:

I’m a first year who was hired…

About a month ago, I received this email in my Inbox:

After 17 years of teaching, I was diagnosed with ‘burnout’ and needed to take some time off. I fought it, but when the lab results showed body systems shutting down, I complied… for awhile. Part-time only made it worse. I couldn’t believe this was happening to me. I LOVED my job, my students, my teaching. I dreaded the politics, the nay-sayers, the whiners. Still, how could I be burned out? I thought that only happened to folks who hated what they were doing or had been there too long. It seems remaining a teacher at the top of your game requires more than 3 hours of sleep per night,…

When I entered the field of education, I was well aware that I wasn’t going into teaching because of the prolific amount of cash I could accumulate from the career. I entered education basically because it’s a good thing to do and it’s something that I absolutely love doing.

Last week, I posted a question about when the right time to relocate to a different teaching job might be. I received some great responses (in the comments, through Twitter, and in email). However, some of the comments sort of caught me off guard.

A few of the comments referenced the Recession of 2009 as being a reason I might want to stay in my current teaching situation (despite the social…

I have been working together with developers at Dizzain.com to create a brand new, professionall designed) theme for So You Want To Teach? We are just about finished and plan on launching it sometime in the first week of March. I’d like to take this opportunity to ask you, my loyal readers, to leave your email or RSS reader, go to the website (www.soyouwantotteach.com) and let me know some of the things you really love about the current theme. Write about them in the comments.

Also, if there are things you don’t like about the current theme, let me know as well. All suggestions will be taken into consideration. I like it when you tell me honestly what you don’t…

I have an admission. If you’ve emailed me in the last year or so, you may have caught on. The thing is…I am behind. On like everything.

With work, church, and mariachi, I tend to remain pretty busy. But when I’m home, often I will sit here looking at blogs, playing catchup in Google Reader or my email, checking my blog stats, checking out Facebook, chatting with friends, and doing all sorts of time-wasting things. These things are all right in and of themselves, but when combined, they lead to me neglecting things such as basic housekeeping, laundry, filing my bills, cooking, and even sleeping.

Then I find a burst of energy, sit down, start sorting through my emails, and…

My buddy Mr. D who writes I Want To Teach Forever has started up a little project this year that I hope lasts all year. He is asking teachers to email him and write a guest post for him about “What is the most important advice you can give to other teachers?” The project is 52 Teachers, 52 Lessons.

I will obviously be submitting an article to the project (I had intended to do so before the end of December, but it didn’t work out). I wanted to provide him with a larger audience of people who might potentially write an article for him and get featured in this project that is sure to be a valuable addition to the…

If you are going to be student teaching in the spring semester of this school year, I want you to contact me. Before the end of this month. I am beginning work on a major project that will benefit you (and other students) tremendously.

Either comment or email.

I told one of my former college professors about my blog shortly after it first started back in 2007. She liked what she saw and decided to use some of my material in one of her classes. In fact, she used So You Want To Teach? as an assignment for one of her classes this semester. Each of the students was assigned to leave a comment on something that I posted on here.

Imagine my surprise when I got an email from her last week asking for my mailing address so that her class could send me a card.

The card came in the mail today and I want to thank Dr. Witt for her wonderful work and inspiration as…

I’ve noticed something lately. I have gotten a handful of comments and emails from people who seem to be teaching in what appears outwardly as a hopeless situation.

I contend that the problem very rarely is in their situation. The problem rests in the lost joy and the long forgotten hope they once had. The dream is not shattered, it simply is not in sight right now. Why have we lost sight of that hope? Because we lack focus.

My assertion is that we have lost focus because we are too busy reacting to events and items that try to wrestle our attention away from the important things. Jonathan wrote a great article about dealing with your mailbox last week….

I got an email from one of the readers concerned about me and Hurricane Ike. No, I’m nowhere near the huge hurricane, though I do have some friends who are in the area. At least one of them is pretty much directly in the path of the hurricane, and he decided to stay home. I talked with him a few times yesterday.

Over on the Texas-Mexico border, there is not a single drop of rain, so life is going on as normal. We had a middle school football game on Thursday, a high school game last night, and I have a couple of mariachi gigs this weekend (both outside).

I also have some family members in the Houston area and…

I am on vacation from July 21st through July 30th! I’ll be going to visit my parents, some friends, cruising Texas, and end up at the Texas Bandmasters Association convention. I’m conducting an experiment while I am out.

I’m calling it Bloggers Gone Wild.

1. I will not write a comment or post on the blog for the duration of my trip.
2. I will read comments and posts on the blog from time to time.
3. I will check my email periodically.

I don’t get it
Of course you don’t get it. There is more.

1. I will create user accounts if you email me and ask for one.
2. Once your account has been created, you will receive an

…

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…

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

…

Even if you ignore the majority of this article, check out the last sentence.

I am absolutely loving school since coming back from Christmas Break. Even so, I am beginning to get burned out. If you want to know why, go read this. He’s still not back yet and it’s all but certain that he will not be coming back next week either. Still no clue when I can expect him.I wrote an email to my principal today, some edited excerpts follow:

I love teaching and I love rehearsing the bands, but I am very tired. The students suffer as a result. More than anything else, that is what breaks my heart about the whole situation.
It’s not that…

This may well be the first time I have written about my teaching life without really setting out a solution or providing much helpful information. Let me know what you think.

Last Friday, the other band director I work with had a mild stroke. He is recovering and is at home resting now. The doctors told him to not return to work for six weeks. As you might imagine, Christmas is a terrible time for band directors to be out like this.

I got to take his band on a Christmas Tour on Thursday, and my band today. We have to make arrangements with other band directors to come over from other campuses to cover the classes that are here…