Less Stress: Declutter Your Inbox Stress Reduction by Joel Wagner - October 10, 2007July 5, 20100 We now have our Desk and Desktop under control. But how do we keep them under control? Better yet, how do we keep from having too much stuff coming into our lives that we allow to become clutter? Email Inbox Something that many teachers can't seem to figure out is how to archive their old emails. Instead, they just leave them all in the inbox. I was at an inservice and the presenter apologized to one of the other teachers because she had been gone for a few days and overlooked the teacher's email because it got lost in the shuffle. She didn't get around to it until two weeks later. That's just plain inexcusable! So how do we avoid
Less Stress: Eliminate Junk Food Stress Reduction by Joel Wagner - October 3, 2007July 5, 20100 Junk Food. We hear the term tossed around all the time. What is junk food? Basically, it's any food that lacks substantial nutritional value. White flour is a perfect example. They take something healthy (wheat flour), bleach it, and kill any nutrients that may have been there. Fried foods are another example. Soft drinks and desserts also have loads of sugar (or comparable unhealthy sugar substitutes) in them. I used to eat them all the time. Since this school year began, I stopped. If it's yellowish in color, it wouldn't be a bad idea to avoid it! Tomorrow, we'll look at how I have replaced the junk food. In addition to drinking almost nothing by water, the elimination of junk
25 Tips For Less Stress Stress Reduction by Joel Wagner - September 29, 2007July 5, 20102 Download the entire series in e-book format here This school year has been remarkably stress-free for me. As a middle school band director working with the non-varsity group, this is unheard of. I have come up with a list of 25 things I have done that have helped to make this happen. During the month of October, the busiest month of the year for people involved with Texas marching bands, I am going to spend each weekday writing very briefly on one of these tips. The articles will be much shorter than my normal articles, but they will be consistent. Drink Water Wake Up Earlier Eliminate Junk Food Increase Healthy Foods Kill Your TV Declutter Your Desk Declutter
Personal Update Personal by Joel Wagner - September 23, 2007July 5, 20102 No weekend wrapup last week. No weekend wrapup this week either. I'm sorry. I am being overwhelmed by work commitments as well as personal commitments. On a personal note, I preached in church last Wednesday and will preach again this Wednesday. That takes a lot of focus and study time, which really seems to make this blog suffer a bit. In addition, there are just a whole lot of things on my plate right now in the personal life. I'm doing fine, but I just need to take a little bit of time off from posting on here. Don't worry, much more good stuff will be coming back again in November and beyond. This is definitely turning out to be
The State of the Blog: 09/01/07 Blogging & Technology by Joel Wagner - September 1, 2007July 5, 20100 The most popular post I made to the blog in the entire month of August was The State of the Blog: 08/01/07. I glanced through it again today and was impressed by the changes that have happened in a month. Specifically, in the readership and authority arenas. it's funny how a little change each day is much less noticeable when viewed daily than it is when viewed from a greater distance. While numbers fluctuate from day to day, FeedBurner tells me that I have averaged 52 subscribers throughout the last 30 days. That number is up to 60 as of this morning. A month ago, we were hanging at 35. My Technorati Authority number has gone from 13 to 24
Weekend Wrapup 08/27/07 Blogging & Technology by Joel Wagner - August 27, 2007July 5, 20101 Today is the first day of school in Texas. Even though the school year starts later, the football season doesn't. I'm sure some of the kids have already begun to burn out because of so much practicing for the last four weeks or so. But the high school band has a football game to play at next Friday, so we have a lot of work yet to do. Fortunately, it has been a terribly mild summer in South Texas, so it could have been much worse. John shows that I'm not the only educator out there who places a high value on personal productivity. Check out his list. A different John shows the value of custodians. We had a speaker
SYWTT’s Job Search Resource Page Why Teachers Quit by Joel Wagner - August 23, 2007July 5, 20100 It's nearing the end of August. Hopefully, you are not looking for a new job this early in the school year, but studies say that 60% of people are thinking of switching jobs at any given time. If this is you, you may want to check out The Ultimate Job Hunt Guide over at Chief Happiness Officer's blog. I've written a some on the topic of switching jobs before. Here are some good articles to get you started. Invalid Reasons Teachers Quit Valid Reasons Teachers Quit 9 Reasons To Quit Teaching (And 10 Reasons To Stick) The Total Résumé Makeover Polishing The Résumé
Anxiety Sets In As The New School Year Looms Ominously Close General by Joel Wagner - August 11, 2007June 25, 20160 The new school year is two weeks and two days away. This time last year, our week of inservices was well under way. Thanks to the Texas legislature, we will not begin staff development until August 20th and are not allowed to begin school before August 27th. That's fine with me, but I am ready to begin the school year. We started our middle school band camp this past Monday and it is so much fun there. As I've mentioned before, these are students that I taught in 6th grade. I am moving from the sixth grade campus to the 7th & 8th grade campus this year. It's so much fun for me to see all of these kids whom I
Weekend Wrapup 08/06/07 Blogging & Technology by Joel Wagner - August 6, 2007July 5, 20101 Today is my sister's birthday. Happy birthday Joel's sister. :) My birthday is also this Wednesday. It's not an education post, but the organization stuff covered is great. I love Zen Habits, and Leo once again hits a homerun here. How to Simplify Your Filing System; or, Why Stacking Just Doesn't Work. How many teachers need to read this one? I am specifically thinking about my high school and middle school English teachers here... John Pearson over at Learn Me Good has written his 300th blog post. It includes a wonderful review of his recently published book of the same name, Learn Me Good. I think I want to buy me a copy of that book. Or maybe John will
New Teacher Survival Kit General by Joel Wagner - August 3, 2007August 5, 201620 We’ve all been there. The beginning of the first year of teaching can be daunting, to say the least. It was the best of times. It was the worst of times. First year horror stories abound. The number of teachers who quit after the first year or two of teaching matches or exceeds the number of teachers who stick with the profession. My theory is that teachers leave the biz for lack of knowledge. College only can do so much in preparation. We hear of how much better student teaching was back in the day than it is now, and how poorly prepared prospective educators are these days. There may be validity in that, but lamenting these things doesn’t solve problems.
The State of the Blog: 08/01/07 Blogging & Technology by Joel Wagner - August 1, 2007July 5, 201011 I took out nearly every advertisement from the site. The exception are links to books on Amazon, and a couple of Text Link Ads. Why? They're simply not making money and they cause screen clutter. So away they go. I additionally got rid of the SnapPreview display that had been popping up every time a user hovered the mouse over an external link. It's extra CPU time and can be annoying quickly. It's great to know how to do that kind of stuff, but brilliance is shown by knowing how to do something and choosing to not do it! Blogging guru Lorelle also left me a comment advising me against it and I trust she knows a little bit about
The Fourth Year: Entering The Special Place Personal by Joel Wagner - July 31, 2007July 5, 20100 In the Band Director world, the fourth year in a school district is a special year. When I got my first job, I remember that it was my boss' fourth year in that school district. Everything at the high school is more special during the fourth year than it has been in previous years. I think this concept also applies to most high school coaches as well as elementary elective teachers. Why? There are a number of reasons that this is a special year. The first is that I have been to every high school football game and marching competition that every student in the high school band has been involved in. This year's seniors have gone through
Weekend Wrapup 07/23/07 Blogging & Technology by Joel Wagner - July 23, 2007July 5, 20101 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?
Shut Up And Teach! General by Joel Wagner - July 19, 2007July 5, 201010 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, many
8 Steps To Building A Better Blog Blogging & Technology by Joel Wagner - July 15, 2007July 5, 20102 This really has nothing to do with education. I wanted to take a chance to stop and address some things that happened this week in my life and the life of this blog. Every day in the past week except for Tuesday, So You Want To Teach? saw more than 50 visitors. It's not like that constitutes a high-traffic blog or anything, but I see healthy, steady growth and want to look at some of the things that I have done to see this growth. Add content I started the blog in February, but only posted three articles a month until we got to the last week of May. Those articles are pretty good and help to form the