I have a few things planned for the summer, but one thing I really would like to do is feature a series of articles by first-year teachers reflecting on their first year of teaching. If you have a blog, feel free to quote liberally from your posts throughout the year. If not, that’s okay! You can write one post or even a handful of them. I’d really like to be able to get these thoughts out there and share them with future first-year teachers.

Maybe you’ve been teaching for longer. Maybe you haven’t. Either way, you are also welcome to submit guest posts. Anything that might remotely relate to teachers is welcome. For ideas from previous guest bloggers, check out…

This evening, I decided to do something I’ve been toying around with since the summer. I finally deleted comments from my blog entirely.

Where it all began
I began this blog as a hobby back in the spring of 2007, shortly after I began to learn more about the potential that blogs held. Life was much simpler back then. For one thing, I taught 6th grade beginning band only. My obligations outside of school were minimal, and the amount of time I spent in front of the computer was similarly low. Life was much simpler back then.

I long for that again.

Where it has taken me
In the fall of 2007, I moved…

Since I have decided this new year to slowly end my hatred of running that I have harbored for the past decade or so, I’m reading more about it. I am inspired to find there are a handful of pretty good health and fitness blogs that my school hasn’t blocked on the network yet too! My conference period can now be spent walking, reading, or actually doing productive things for my band!

Today I have been catching up on some of the Twitter links I’ve seen and came across 13 Most Inspirational YouTube Videos of All-Time that Angela Maiers had sent out a few days back. I was really impressed by this video.

I was so impressed that I…

1. 1999 – How To Win Friends And Influence People (buy on Amazon)
   Back when I was in college, I didn’t know much about social interactions at all. I was horrible with remembering names, I didn’t really make much eye contact, and I just sort of needed this book to really open my eyes

…

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about how my friend Junior had posted on his blog calling for people to write about what kind of a legacy we wanted to leave. I have been thinking a whole lot over the past few months about my progression as a teacher, and this seemed like the perfect opportunity to really flesh out some about what kinds of things I have been through.

I’ve sort of broken things down by year and I would be interested to know how many other teachers could say their progress as a teacher has been similar. Clearly I have not yet arrived, but I have learned a handful of things along the way, and it’s been…

In rereading the last about teacher burnout, I was struck by a handful of things that my reader mentioned in the email. I thought it was powerful enough that it was worth digging into deeper, and yet I didn’t want to dilute the conversation that might come as a result of the emotional impact of the reader’s email.

With that being said, here are 20 insights from a 17-year veteran teacher about things that teachers ought to be doing.

1. Take care of your body
2. Avoid whiners
3. Get more sleep
4. Accept imperfection from yourself
   
5. Don’t expect to make everyone happy
6. Don’t abuse your sick days, but do use them
7. Relax more
8. Have trusted friends who can smack you upside the

…

Andy Zweibel (whom I’ve been following on Twitter for a while now — @Zweibz7) just started up a blog specifically focusing on topics concerning Music Education students. The blog is MusicEdMajor.net.

Andy is currently seeking contributors for the site, and I think this is definitely a worthwhile endeavor. Hopefully we can get in touch with some music education professors and those who have influence in the music education world to try to get more people on board.

I know a handful of musicians and music teachers are subscribed to my blog and I hope they will give Andy some encouragement, links, and just send people his way.

I also would like to add that he has chosen a very nice,…

I have gotten questions from time to time about what plugins I use on my blog. I’ve posted some plugin lists in the past, but sometimes plugins are no longer supported by their author or else the functionality is duplicated in later WordPress versions. So here are 20 WordPress 2.7 Plugins You Can’t Live Without.

1. Advanced Excerpt
   Excerpts allow more articles to show up on the home page, while still not allowing too many links (Search Engines don’t like more than 100 links on a page) or too much clutter. Advanced Excerpt lets me customize how many words or characters appear before the cut as well as letting me choose which HTML elements to strip from the code

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

Let’s play a game
I want you to think about your classes right now. Think about the four biggest trouble-makers on your roll sheet. Now imagine, what it would be like if they all got sent to another school. You wake up tomorrow and those four kids are gone. What a great day!

But you know what?
With them gone, four more kids will step up and strart ruining your life. There is no end to the number of children who will misbehave if given the chance! Even if you only have one kid, they will still act up…

When I first started out, I was living by myself far away from home. I didn’t have any friends in the community outside of the school. And those were either other band directors or band parents. I didn’t do anything to really try to keep in contact with college friends, I sort of had the Lone Ranger type approach.

That was way back in 2002. My how things have changed!  Now, education prep programs all over seem to be requiring students to read and comment on blogs as part of their education. With that being said, I have seen quite a rise in the number of educational blogs out there since I started blogging two years ago.

I have seen…

Over the last almost two years that I have been reading and writing blogs, I have come across a handful of lists of Top Education Blogs. Normally, I discover them when I either get a trackback or (more commonly) when a pagr refers someone over to my site. The latter was the case today.

As far as the rankings I’ve seen before, this one was the most intriguing. Instead of simply using Technorati data or any type or arbitrary kind of thing, Jason Falls (an outsider to the world of edublogs) pulled a list of 150 EduBlogs, and ranked them based on reader interaction over the past 30 days through Postrank.

All in all, it is definitely an intriguing methodology…

In continuing my review of the year, I am looking today at some of the articles that I wish were more popular. They may have received a handful of comments, or they may not have received any. The most common cause for their relative obscurity is that they are older articles and have gotten lost.

Even so, many of them haven’t received a whole lot of traffic. So I’m dusting them off, polishing them up, and repackaging them here.

Two dozen overlooked articles of 2008

1. January 14th, 2008  8 Ways Blogging Makes Me A Better Teacher
2. January 20th, 2008  What If…
3. January 31st, 2008  Clinicians
4. February 11th, 2008  Hyper-Focus Fosters Higher Quality Output
5. February 21st, 2008  Apologizing
6. March 15th, 2008  Whitespace
7. March 17th, 2008  You’ve Been

…

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….

As my series of 10 Things I Wish I Knew As A First Year Teacher comes to a close, I want to point out that the world has changed dramatically over the last 7 years since I began teaching. As an educator, the primary advantage in the tremendous growth of the Internet would be the incredible EduBlogs that have sprung up.

As someone who is quite technologically sophisticated, the presence of this many blogs would have been tremendously helpful for me back then. The problem is that most of the people out there aren’t quite as technologically saavy as I am. So what is an aspiring young educator to do?

I’ve been thinking about this quite a bit. Honestly, there…

Nothing in the classroom is worth added stress in your life. Nothing.

I know so many band directors (and other teachers as well, but mostly band directors) who get so incredibly worked up over their jobs that they lose their health, marriage, youthful physique, energy, or alienate their own children. Why? Because of their own selfish pride.

Just because nothing catastrophic happens this year doesn’t mean that nothing will. Stress can be cumulative in your life and may be building up and festering over a period of a handful of years.

The best solution is to stop. Now.

How do we avoid stress?
I have written at great length about this in the past, so instead of…

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

…

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

…

As we continue the Blog Revolution Project, we come to day three of our focus on writing. Today will look at one of the best ways to keep readers coming back each day. It also happens to be one of the best ways to bring in traffic much further down the road. We’ll focus on the art of the series.

Just as we looked at how writing lists can be very popular on Monday, another great way to encourage traffic to return is to write lists, but extend them over a period of a few days or even a few weeks. Essentially writing lists of articles, or a series. Some of the pivotal points in this blog’s history have revolved…

I have had quite a few sites link to me lately and I have not returned the favor. If you have linked to me at any point, please trust that I will be linking to you within the next three months. I’m telling you, this site will go crazy after the school year is over. I may be able to do some more catching up over spring break in a week or so. We’ll see what happens.

Joseph Pisano has posted the latest Official List Of The ME Bloggers.

jd2718 added me to his March link updates. He also said I’m a great idea and very helpful. Awww, thanks!

Wow, where has the time gone? I’ve been featured in a…

A few weeks ago, I wrote about an experience I had where a student left my classroom crying and went to talk with the counselor. Read about it here. Be sure to read the comments below the article also!

Since then, I apologized. I also made the commitment to slow down my teaching style.

I wanted to take a chance to revisit that incident and follow up on some of the things that have happened since then, as well as some of the aftermath.

On the Monday morning following the weekend when I had decided to slow things down, I was amazed and surprised to see the other band director walk in just before the percussion class. I left this…