Reader Appreciation: Angela Maiers Reader Appreciation by Joel Wagner - November 12, 2007May 29, 20165 November is Reader Appreciation Month at So You Want To Teach? Today's featured reader is Angela Maiers. Name: Angela Maiers Location: Des Moines, Iowa Occupation: National Education Consultant, author, Adjunct Professor teaching post graduate work in the area of reading and literacy Blog: Angela Maiers Tell me some of your favorite things about your job That is a hard one. I LOVE MY JOB. I feel like I have the best of all education worlds. I love teaching grad school, my students are amazingly dedicated teachers, I have the opportunity to travel across the United States helping teachers and schools work at the grassroots level to improve students lives, and my favorite part is working with the students. EAch week, I am invited to do demonstration
Updating Your Resume General by Joel Wagner - November 11, 2007June 19, 20160 It never hurts to go back and polish your resume from time to time. In fact, your resume could be the reason you are not getting job interviews. Here are some great links to help get you started in that direction. Further Reading But I Don’t Want To Teach — So You Want To Teach? Help! My Resume Is Blocking Me From Interviews — Record Eagle Blogs How To Construct A Killer Resume, From Start To Finish — The Simple Dollar How To Make A Resume That Gets Results — Employment Digest How To Spiff Up Your Resume — New York Times Looking For A New Job? — So You Want To Teach? Polishing The Resume — So You Want To Teach? Ten
65 Things You Should Do Right Now To Avoid Teacher Burnout Stress Reduction by Joel Wagner - November 10, 2007September 3, 20123 This past Tuesday, I took a day off of school. This is not normal for me, and I even had to fight my urge to go up to school and make sure things were running smoothly. I even drove up to the school and chose not to get out of the car. Why? Because I had a chance where I knew I could relax for a day and things wouldn't fall apart. I suppose it's sort of a building process for me of letting go of my band. I don't like to miss school. I remember my parents encouraging me when I was in high school to miss a day when I didn't fell well. I have been debating missing a day
Reader Appreciation: Mister Teacher Reader Appreciation by Mister Teacher - November 9, 2007July 5, 20100 November is Reader Appreciation Month at So You Want To Teach? Today's featured reader is Mister Teacher.Name: Mister Teacher Location:Near Dallas, TX Occupation: Teacher, 3rd grade math and science Blog: Learn Me Good Tell me some of your favorite things about your job My coworkers are great, I enjoy all of the funny stories that my job provides, my job is NEVER EVER boring, and when I am finally able to actually TEACH, I feel very rewarded when that little light bulb goes off. Tell me some things you loved about your favorite teacher(s) Kept things interesting, used humor, was encouraging. List some of your most effective classroom management strategies I do the same stuff as Jack Bauer on 24.
Reader Appreciation: Eric Turner Reader Appreciation by Joel Wagner - November 8, 2007July 5, 20100 November is Reader Appreciation Month at So You Want To Teach? Today's featured reader is Eric Turner. Name: Eric Turner Location: Tennessee Occupation: History/Secondary Ed Student Blog: Secondhand Thoughts Tell me some of your favorite things about your job I love learning and I love the interaction between professor and students Tell me some things you loved about your favorite teacher(s) Whew, this is a hard one. I think the things I loved about the teachers I loved is the high standards they maintained, yet were also compassionate, fair, and understanding. Oh, and they each had a great sense of humor. They each inspired me in their own way. How they inspired me is hard to define. Some of the ways were the
Reader Appreciation: Gillian King Reader Appreciation by Joel Wagner - November 7, 2007July 5, 20100 November is Reader Appreciation Month at So You Want To Teach? Today's featured reader is Gillian King. Name: Gillian King Location: Sydney, Australia Occupation: I run a marketing consultancy, but I started out as a High School teacher Blog: School of St. Jude -- My blog supports the School of St Jude, a free school for bright kids from the poorest homes, in Tanzania. These kids rarely get to finish primary school, and typical class sizes are 60-70, so the School of St Jude is like a haven for these capable kids. Tell me some of your favorite things about your job One of my favourite things about the School of St Jude that it was started by an Australian
25 WordPress Plugins Every Blog Should Have Blogging & Technology by Joel Wagner - November 6, 2007July 5, 20102 This post is outdated. Edit 06/06/2009 - I have recently written a much more current and similar article. Please check out 20 WordPress 2.7 Plugins You Can’t Live Without. Reader experience is the most important element of any site. Whether it be an entertainment site or an information portal, the ease of use for the reader is vital. I run this blog using WordPress because it gives me incredible control over the reader experience. I large part of that control comes in the way of plugins. What are plugins? Plugins are basically optional programs that run behind the scene. Some of them are never even seen by the reader. Technically, they aren't programs -- they are really scripts that run on
Reader Appreciation: ms_teacher Reader Appreciation by Joel Wagner - November 6, 2007July 5, 20100 November is Reader Appreciation Month at So You Want To Teach? Today's featured reader is ms_teacher. Name: ms_teacher Location: Northern California Occupation: Professional Educator (aka teacher); Grade 6, mostly Language Arts and Social Studies Blog: ms_teacher Tell me some of your favorite things about your job Favorite things about teaching: Being able to interact with kids who are mostly good and do try to do what’s expected of them; sharing my enthusiasm for my subject matter – you should hear me talk to them about why I love Mesopotamia, even more than the ever popular Egypt! I also enjoy seeing their growth over the nine months I have them. They come into middle school as scared elementary students and leave at the end
Reader Appreciation: José Vilson Reader Appreciation by Joel Wagner - November 5, 2007July 5, 20102 November is Reader Appreciation Month at So You Want To Teach? Today's featured reader is José Vilson.Name: José Vilson Location: New York, NY Occupation: 6th Grade Math Teacher Blog: The José Vilson Tell me some of your favorite things about your job My favorite things about my job are the ability to help children achieve their best, inspiring them not only academically but personally. I also like getting up on my stage and performing for them, too. The thrill of a good and well thought out lesson is incomparable. I love the kids' energies. Their inquisitiveness makes me want to go and teach them, and push them harder. I love the instant feedback I get from my students about my
Transforming A Tense Relationship Where There Is Low Respect Inspiration by Joel Wagner - November 2, 2007July 5, 20104 Recently, a reader wrote to me saying: I am currently midway through student teaching and am struggling with classroom management (surprise!). I am not really getting any feedback from my cooperating teacher, other than "use short, quick redirects" and "your emotions are too transparent to students". I worked in business for 18 years prior to this experience and I'm just struggling with how to try and turn a tense situation around. I have read through the articles posted on this site and they have given me some good ideas to work with. Here is my question: What can you do to turn around a tense relationship with students who do not regard you as "the
Less Stress: Play At Work Stress Reduction by Joel Wagner - November 2, 2007July 5, 20100 We come now to the final chapter of our 25 Tips For Less Stress. This is perhaps my favorite one of all. Without this decision, you cannot have a stress-free life. The key is to choose to have fun at work. No matter what industry you work in, if you love your job, you will be more productive. In education, our products are educated people. The more we love teaching, the more of our children will be successful. That love will translate into their development of greater passion for learning. It's an upward spiral. Conversely, when we hate our job -- or when we just show up to collect the paycheck -- it also shows. The students laboriously come to
Less Stress: Don’t Take Work Home Stress Reduction by Joel Wagner - November 1, 2007July 5, 20104 I wrote a couple of days ago about a plan to reduce the amount of papers that you take home. Preferably, that number will approach zero as your systems get refined. That is NOT the focus of this entry. The goal here is to truly liberate you from your job. The story goes: A senior monk and a junior monk were traveling together. At one point, they came to a river with a strong current. As the monks were preparing to cross the river, they saw a very young and beautiful woman also attempting to cross. The young woman asked if they could help her. The senior monk carried this woman on his shoulder, forded the river and let her
Less Stress: Work Hard At Work Stress Reduction by Joel Wagner - October 31, 2007July 5, 20101 How much time is wasted in classrooms around the world each day? How much time is wasted in businesses each day because employees are not diligently using their time? As I've written before, I view squandered time at work as being equivalent to stealing from the employer. One of the best ways to avoid having to take work home is to get all of your work done while you are at work. The key to making this happen is to work hard at work. Here is a 10-step method to work hard at work. Have a list of work to do before the day begins (include due dates and times) Break down large tasks into smaller chunks Prioritize the
Less Stress: Work Only At Work Stress Reduction by Joel Wagner - October 30, 2007July 5, 20102 I rarely take work home any more. I used to do it all the time. Then I noticed something. I rarely got any work done at home, and I felt guilty about not getting it done at home. I also realized that when I didn't take work home, I didn't fall too far behind when I got back to school. I am able to find ways to catch up, or find corners to cut. What if the only work we had to grade were quizzes and exams? How would that transform our classrooms and our lives? What if we set up our grading scale something like this: Daily Work - 10% Quizzes - 40% Tests - 50% I understand that
Less Stress: Only Work At Work Stress Reduction by Joel Wagner - October 29, 2007July 5, 20100 Each morning when I come into the band hall, there are always a handful of students who come to drop off their instruments before school. Often they will come in and stand around talking. Because our custodian runs the vacuum each day and doesn't fix the chairs after he finishes, the entire classroom has to be set up each day. I would prefer that they either practice their instruments or leave, but my coworker wants his students to come in and socialize or whatever. Since he gets to school later than I do, I have come up with a plan that works. I tell them to find something productive to do. That could be setting up chairs and stands, practicing,