Do I Really Want To Teach? Reader Appreciation by Joel Wagner - March 31, 2008July 2, 20106 I found this article that I wrote back in November but never got around to posting on the blog. Do I really want to teach? In my first two years of teaching, not a week went by when I didn't ask myself that very question. Many people face it every day. Without question, the most popular search terms that brings visitors to my blog are "quit teaching" and "do I want to teach?" I wonder how many Google searches are done each day on the subject. I wonder how many young teachers decide each day that this will be their last semester to teach. It's tragic, really. At the same time, the greater tragedy is the number of people who
How To Cope With Tragedy General by Joel Wagner - August 22, 2007July 5, 20100 Last week, Michelle wrote that she learned that one of her colleagues recently passed away. She writes a popular blog on blogging and was wondering if she should take some time away or just how to handle her desires to grow as a writer, generate income with the blog, and also just get a chance to deal with the emotional heaviness of the situation. Last November, I went to the first funeral of a former student of mine. She was a high school tuba player in the two years that I knew her. She graduated in 2004. She lived down the street from me. She washed my car for a quarter once. We traded movies during the summer, and