If this is your first time visiting this site, or even if you’ve been reading for a while, there are undoubtedly some articles that you’ve missed along the journey. As I have been working a lot on organizing the site lately, it has come to my attention that there are over 400 posts on the site. This can be kind of daunting for a new reader to say the least.

These are some of my favorite articles and series that I’ve written on the site. If you’ve read these, maybe you could check in and respond to a comment or two!

1. Questions That Will Save Your Career
2. Where Have All The Good Teachers Gone?
3. The Best Time To

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This is an article in the Total Teacher Transformation series. Click here for a complete table of contents.

I hope that this series so far has been useful for some of you. I’m not getting an overwhelming amount of feedback specifically on the series, but I guess I really can’t complain about over 40 (non-spam) comments in the last week, even if they were not entirely devoted to the Total Teacher Transformation series.

I find that it’s always nice to get feedback when you are trying to do something important. In thinking about this, I am actually reminded of the early days of my Total Teacher Transformation back 5 years ago. I didn’t have anyone there saying, “You’re doing a great job”…

Reader Appreciation Month didn’t quite turn out the way I had envisioned it would. That is primarily my fault. As I sit here, I realize there are some things that I used to do with blogging that I don’t do any longer. I have decided it’s time for me to change some things. You may or may not notice the changes as I begin implementing them. If you do, great. If not, then perhaps it is simply a change to the way I approach blogging. Whatever the case, it’ll be good.

How can I apply this to my classroom?
How many times do we get into the habit of being so familiar with the subject matter that it no…

Thanksgiving is a holiday for remembering what we have and giving thanks to our God for His blessings. I like to spend the months of November and December reaching out and giving. I practice giving as a regular habit throughout much of my life, but I specifically focus in these two months on giving back to my blogging community.

Last year I highlighted a number of readers with Reader Appreciation Month. At the end, I did some great summaries:

• 50 Classroom Management Tips I Have Learned This Month
• 47 Blogs That My Readers Are Reading
• Top 5 Character Traits Of Great Teachers
• 50 Reasons To Love Your Job As A Teacher

I recently created a list of 10…

When I first started out teaching, I desperately wanted the kids to like me. To this end, I ended up letting my classes get out of control. A handful of things contributed to this:

• Concerning myself with every matter that was brought to my attention
• Allowing kids to mesbehave
• Trying to get the kids to like me
• Yelling at kids
• Arguing with them

…

I recently took my band to the UIL Concert & Sight Reading competition. We worked hard on the music. We worked hard in after school sectionals. We worked hard on passing classes to retain eligibility. The end result was that the band got first division in the Concert portion of the contest, and first division in the Sight Reading portion. That combination is called Sweepstakes.

Putting together a performance like this takes its toll on everyone involved. As a result, I have fallen behind on a number of things in my personal life. The most notable is my housekeeping.Since I conduct the second band, it is made up of mostly 7th graders. This was their first year to go to…

Idea stolen from Chris Thomas

Have you ever:

• Changed a personal habit? What was it and how did you accomplish it?
• Lost more than 30 pounds? How did you do it and how did it make you feel?
• Paid off over $10,000 in debt? What steps did you take and how did the process affect your views of borrowing?
• Done something you never thought you could do? What and how?
• Done or said something you regret? What were the circumstances and what did you learn from the process?

This blog has brought some exciting and unexpected things into my life. In this article, I’ll discuss some of the biggest surprises that have come about as a result of this.

A brief background
It was about a year ago that I first began to really get into blogging. I knew of blogs and actually had a few on livejournal and myspace for a few years. I was vaguely aware of RSS back in 2002 when it first came on the scene and began to gain some popularity. I just had never really gotten into the whole blogging thing.

I began reading blogs some and started learning. I was inspired. But I still never ventured into the “edublogosphere.” In…

On Sunday, we looked back at some of The Loneliest Articles of 2007, today, we’ll go to the other extreme and look at the busiest articles of 2007. These are the articles that generated the most comments. I’ve gone through the articles and found those that received the most comments. After boiling down that list, I have come up with the 15 most commented articles.

1. 148th Carnival of Education December 5th, 2007 (9 comments by 9 authors, 4 trackbacks) (13)
2. The State of the Blog: 08/01/07 August 1st, 2007 (11 comments by 11 authors) (11)
3. 5 Surefire Tips For Handling Misbehavior September 12th, 2007 (8 comments by 7 authors) (7)
4. The Purpose Of A Personal Mission Statement July 26th,

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I got an email from one of our secretaries yesterday asking me to call one of the other administrative assistants. The message left no indication of why I should call her. I have not yet called her and I don’t intend to do so. I have a problem with phone calls.

In a world where email has become a standard of communication at work, phone calls are a mere inconvenience

Phone calls pose as important interruptions
Often they are unimportant or at the very least delayable. At the worst, they are totally unimportant. Phone calls allow someone else to control our environment.

I don’t answer the phone during class
I made the decision my third year of teaching to never…

One of the biggest drains on my energy is paper clutter. One of the biggest drains on the environment is trash. For these reasons, I try to do everything I can digitally rather than with paper.

I am so used to having so much paperwork, that I forget what it would be like without it. I went to school to be a band director, not a clerical assistant, but there are entire days where all I do is office work while another director teaches my class. Fundraising, returned progress reports, ARD forms, absence notes, hall passes, schedule change forms, field trip requests, receipts, deposit slips, you name it, I have it. Oh yeah, the students also occasionally turn work in…

Well, this is one of my weakest areas. I have my work environment very organized and neat, but my home is not. Part of my problem is that I know what to do and how to do it, I just don’t seem to find the energy after working 11-16 hour days to come home and do it. And in the marching season, many of my weekends are taken up traveling out of town to football games and/or marching competitions.

During the rest of the school year, I am generally pretty good about it, but still not perfect.

Why is a clean home important?
Again, the same as a clean desk provides peace of mind, so does a clean home….

I used to wake up every morning about an hour before I wanted to be at school. I try to get there by 7:20, so that meant waking up around 6:20. That resulted in an extremely rushed morning. Plus the traffic at my new school is way heavier than the traffic was at my old school. I literally have to leave my house at 7 to make it there by 7:20. And I live less than 3 miles away…

So I have gotten into the habit of waking up around 5:30 or earlier most mornings. This lets me have some time to stretch and get my body moving some before getting in the shower and not being rushed. I am…

As the school year looms closer and closer, I am going to establish a blogging routine. The plan is to drastically reduce my blogging from every day as I have over the summer to three times a week. Beginning today, each Monday will feature a “Weekend Wrapup” where I’ll point you to a handful of blog articles that have caught my interest in one way or another throughout the course of the prior week. As I get the process more refined, it will take shape. I am playing catchup now following the Texas Bandmasters Association convention, but I thought I would go ahead and start the habit.

Mister Teacher over at Learn Me Good has written Quein es muy macho?…

I get so tired of hearing teachers complaining about No Child Left Behind. I get so tired of hearing teachers complain about administration. I get so tired of hearing teachers complain about parents.

Shut up and teach!
It’s a simple concept, but some teachers seem to derive greater joy from feeling victimized than they do from feeling victorious. After all, it’s much simpler to complain than it is to create solutions. I am convinced that if I took the skills that I use in teaching beginning band, that my students would excel.

I want to share a few things that really seem to help my students learn the material well. Keep in mind that as they enter 6th grade,…

This is the fifth in a series of articles entitled 5 Habits of Highly Effective Teachers.

Community Procedures
How do you interact with your community? I know for many teachers, this is a frightening proposition. Reading some things that other teachers post, it seems that most teachers who live in the same community wherein they teach either participate in public activities either in fear, out of seeming ignorance, or with balance. this is probably my weakest area and something I am seriously working to get better at. If you have any suggestions, I’d love to hear them.

Participating in fear
This is probably the category I often find myself most associated with. These people avoid most public places….

This is the fourth in a series of articles entitled 5 Habits of Highly Effective Teachers.

What are some of the personal habits that are important to me?

Personal Procedures
What are some of the personal habits that are important to me? As I’m sitting here in the middle of the summer writing this, I realize that some of my structure has left my life. I stay up too late, and I wake up too late. I take longer than normal getting ready in the morning, and I sit and read a lot more now than I do during the school year. But disregarding that, here are some of the things that are important to me to keep my…

This is the third in a series of articles entitled 5 Habits of Highly Effective Teachers.

Relationship Procedures
In teaching, as in most any businesses — and life in general — relationships will either make you successful, or else make you fail. Our relationships spring ultimately from the first habit; our ability to communicate well. But good communication skills alone are not enough to establish powerful relationships. There are more important elements. Here is where again I point out the important role that reading How To Win Friends And Influence People has played in my life. Outstanding book.

While on the subject of 5 Habits of Highly Effective Teachers, I felt it important to once again go over some…

This is the second in a series of articles entitled 5 Habits of Highly Effective Teachers.

Classroom Procedures
The procedures that you lay out in the classroom are the most outwardly evident procedures that you have in place. For this reason, they are key elements of your overall classroom management plan. Much of the procedures really depend on the age-group you teach. Since I teach middle school, my procedures are very middle-school oriented. These procedures can be broken up into three categories:

1. Beginning of class
2. Middle of class
3. End of class

Beginning of class
The tone of the entire class is established before the students walk in the door. We’ve all heard the old adage, You…

This is the first in a series of articles entitled 5 Habits of Highly Effective Teachers.

Communication Procedures
Without question, one of the most essential elements of any good relationship is clear and open communication. As a teacher, practically everything that we do in the classroom is communication in one sense or another.

With this in mind, it becomes evident why communication procedures are the most important skills for us to develop.

I have previously written regarding some positive ways to communicate with others. This article is well worth the reading. However this time, we’ll look at some procedures that can be set up that will facilitate greater communication.

The first step to more effective communication is to eliminate unnecessary…