For the third time this week, I ran 30 minutes nonstop this evening. I walked in a 5K a couple of weeks ago. I am learning a whole lot about myself through the process of running. I will continue posting more updates over at Can Wii Do It? over the next few weeks, if you’re interested.

To read my latest post, go read Joel: I did it.

I am leaving tomorrow after school to go to the annual Texas Music Educators Association clinic/convention in San Antonio. I’m not taking my laptop with me and won’t be accessing a computer besides my iPhone, so I will be away from blogging for the rest of the week. I don’t want to spend a long time here, but I thought I would note that Thursday marks the third anniversary of So You Want To Teach?

This has been a fun project. I’ve learned a whole lot about web development, myself, teaching, and the art of blogging through the building and maintaining of this site. It has become more of a burden than I ever imagined, but I do enjoy the…

When I was struggling to find hope early in my career as a teacher, I came across a few pieces of advice given by King Solomon from the Proverbs:

He who spares his rod hates his son,
But he who loves him disciplines him promptly. — Proverbs 13:24

This one jumped out at me as I realized I overlooked way too much misbehavior. I came to understand that by continually letting the students misbehave because I wanted them to like me was actually counter-productive and instead it made them respect me less. More than that, it showed me that whereas I thought I was being loving, I was actually being hateful.

That helped me a whole lot as it…

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…

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…

Legacy
Main Entry: 1leg·a·cy
Pronunciation: \ˈle-gə-sē\
Function: noun
Inflected Form(s): plural leg·a·cies
Etymology: Middle English legacie office of a legate, bequest, from Anglo-French or Medieval Latin; Anglo-French, office of a legate, from Medieval Latin legatia, from Latin legatus
Date: 15th century

2 : something transmitted by or received from an ancestor or predecessor or from the past <the legacy of the ancient philosophers>

My friend Junior writes:

I’m proposing, my fellow Christian brother and sister bloggers, that we do a week of “Legacy…

This summer has been the best summer of my teaching career so far. Unfortunately for you, I haven’t blogged about it a whole lot. As I get back into the routine of things a little bit more, I will have some more time and energy to begin writing about some of the things that I have experienced and why it is that this summer has been so good.

It all started back at the end of May when I made the decision to miss school on Memorial Day so I could go spend the weekend with my family. My sister was in town and my cousin had a party celebrating his graduation from Med School as a neurosurgeon. I hadn’t…

Here is a brief summary of the last 19 months of my life.

In December of 2007, I was getting ready for work one Friday morning. I got a phone call from one of the high school assistant band directors. He told me that the other middle school director I work with had a stroke and was at the hospital. This was a huge blow to the band program as he has been in the district longer than I’ve been alive. It also made for a difficult month for me that included taking two bands to the Christmas Parade the next day, taking each band to four elementary concerts on consecutive days the next week, and preparing both bands for…

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

What a wild week this has been! I’m surprised by how much even going over these classroom management basics on here has impacted my teaching. When I preach this stuff, I sort of have to force myself to follow through. I’ve been discussing this stuff with a couple of friends this week, and just in case one of them walks into my classroom, I want to make sure they see the same stuff!

So if you’ve been following along, you are coming to a realization of just how important classroom management is to your overall effectiveness as a teacher.

I know that the week…

I’ve been thinking lately about trying to have each day be a sort of theme day. I don’t intend on posting every day (that’s not realistic for me at this time), but I would like for things to be a bit better aligned. So for instance, if I write a list article, I’ll schedule it for the next available Monday. If I have a blogging article, I’ll schedule it for the next available Wednesday. Or something along those lines. Here’s the ideas I’ve come up with:

Monday
Music Monday - I am a band director. I haven’t posted a whole lot about teaching band. I would like to overcome that and really begin to place a bit more emphasis…

Holly writes:

I am a nineteen year old (3rd yr) secondary education student (yrs 8-12 ) at the University of Queensland in Australia. I have read the above comments and would love with your permission to use some of your comments as a reference (In which you will be quoted) in a case study /research report I am writing on Asperge’s (Task Outcome: A written Report reporting the procedures for preparing and conducting a face-to-face interview and integrating the outcomes/findings of the interview with the ideas from the academic literature and research.)
On this blog I have found your opinions to be very informative and would be very appreciative if you could tell me some teaching method’s you have…

A Matter of Priorities
During my first two years of teaching, I discovered that I had a whole lot of information, but the students just weren’t listening to me or learning from me. It is not, mind you, because I was giving them wrong information. It was, however, because I had placed the priorities in the wrong order. When we have the proper perspective, we will end up teaching far more than we ever imagined we might teach.

And so began the very first post on the blog that would turn into So You Want To Teach? That was posted two years ago today, on February 11th, 2007. Over the remainder of this month, I will be looking back at…

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 believe that every teacher has the potential to reach out and impact the life of every student they have in their class. The key is that it takes a whole lot of dedicated attention and effort.

My theory is that it is relativaly easy to positively impact about 60% of the kids in each of our classes. The challenge comes from two types of kids.

1. The “trouble makers”
2. The “quiet kids”

What are some of the most effective techniques you have found to reach these?

Instead of going about my normal routine of listing ways that I think it is possible to reach students, I want to open up discussion here. I have started it off with…

Today was a pretty good day in parts. In fact, most of my classes went really well. Except for my percussion class. It has been bad since the middle of December. This is slightly abnormal for me, but the following post is a narrative with a question and plea for help at the end.

Why is my percussion class getting out of hand?
Because I have two different groups of students in there. Since the director I work with had a stroke, I have been the only band director at my school. This makes my work load heavier, but manageable for the most part. The percussion is the exception because it is a combination of percussionists from two different bands….

I have been blogging about teaching for a while. I came across a post by Joseph Pisano (the original post is here) where he is trying to get at least 100 Music Education Bloggers blogging about music education or music technology. Part of me has been wanting to jump into the MusEduBlogging world, but it wasn’t until this morning that I decided to take the plunge. I have learned a whole lot about blogging over the last year and so I hope to be able to use the knowledge I have gained to try to make this site one of the premier sites in the MusEduBlogging world.

Yes, I just created that term. A Google search for both MusEduBlog returns…

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.

A dozen overlooked articles of 2007

1. A Customer Service Oriented Classroom Experience February 24th, 2007
2. Be The Best Teacher In The World May 19th, 2007
3. Reading May 29th, 2007
4. Finding Excellent Educators To Emulate June 5th, 2007
5. Where Have All

…

Time is a commodity where everyone is equal. But some people seem to do a whole lot more with their time and others seem to do a whole lot less. But we all stay busy. The problem is that some people choose how to fill their lives and other people allow their lives to be filled.

It’s so easy to get into the trap of agreeing to do everything that anyone asks us to do. Ever wonder why it is the youngest teachers who end up doing the most work in many schools? It’s because the experience teaches us that our class suffers when we take on too many responsibilities.

Basic time management

1. List your responsibilities
2. Prioritize your list,

…

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…

We put a sign up a few places around the band hall on Wednesday. It says:

EVERYONE NEEDS AN ATTITUDE ADJUSTMENT
Choose Your Attitude :) :(

I decided that I needed to take that advice myself. So I am going to adjust my attitude.

I was reminded yesterday just how different 7th graders are than 6th graders. I said something to one of my favorite students (yes, teachers have favorites) in class. It wasn’t intended as a rude remark, but it was sarcastic. She obviously took it the wrong way, and she began crying. There was no sobbing or anything, but there were definitely tears.

That tore me up. Then I was at church that night. We were studying…