Heartbreaking Story Inspiration by Joel Wagner - January 31, 2009June 30, 201011 A reader wrote in with the following story. I don't even know how to begin to respond to it, but I'll add some thoughts at the end. Hopefully this reader's experience will serve some of you somehow in the future. When I interviewed at my school, it appeared to be everything I wanted in a job. I interviewed for one prep. I addressed my classroom procedures, consequences I employed, rewards I employed, my teaching style, asked about administrative involvement... and basically heard everything I wanted to hear. I fortunately came to that school with very kind references and evaluations. What I found on my first day were five preps across three grade levels. When I questioned it, I was told
Falling Behinder Personal by Joel Wagner - January 28, 2009June 30, 20103 Despite my best efforts, my computer has crashed. It's old and the thing was running pretty slowly. I have reinstalled Windows and am in the slow process of getting things back up to speed. But -- needless to say, I am not going to be able to get the weekly review of the Student Teaching thing done. Looks like that will be a sort of double thing for this weekend.
Falling Behind Personal by Joel Wagner - January 25, 2009June 30, 20105 I have an admission. If you've emailed me in the last year or so, you may have caught on. The thing is...I am behind. On like everything. With work, church, and mariachi, I tend to remain pretty busy. But when I'm home, often I will sit here looking at blogs, playing catchup in Google Reader or my email, checking my blog stats, checking out Facebook, chatting with friends, and doing all sorts of time-wasting things. These things are all right in and of themselves, but when combined, they lead to me neglecting things such as basic housekeeping, laundry, filing my bills, cooking, and even sleeping. Then I find a burst of energy, sit down, start sorting through my emails, and
TGIF, That Means It’s Almost Monday! Music Education by Joel Wagner - January 22, 2009June 30, 20108 Please don't tell me this picture represents your views! As a teacher, and specifically as a band director, I am not a big fan of Mondays. As a worker, I really love Monday. Why? Great question. Why I don't like Mondays Kids generally don't practice over the weekend. This means that part of Monday is spent recovering and getting the band to sound the way I want it to sound again. Anecdotally, I find that the students are less focused on Mondays than they are on Wednesdays or Thursdays. Those days seem to be the best teaching days of the week. Often, I will plan my schedule with that assumption. More on that later. This week we didn't have school on
NTLS Teacher College – No Teacher Left Standing Why Teachers Quit by Joel Wagner - January 20, 2009June 30, 20100 A little bit of levity here, in light of my current Student Teaching Project. (By the way, if you are student teaching, join us by writing a blog and letting me know about it!) Brought to you by TeacherPortal.com.
52 Teachers, 52 Lessons Blogging & Technology by Joel Wagner - January 19, 2009June 30, 20100 My buddy Mr. D who writes I Want To Teach Forever has started up a little project this year that I hope lasts all year. He is asking teachers to email him and write a guest post for him about "What is the most important advice you can give to other teachers?" The project is 52 Teachers, 52 Lessons. I will obviously be submitting an article to the project (I had intended to do so before the end of December, but it didn't work out). I wanted to provide him with a larger audience of people who might potentially write an article for him and get featured in this project that is sure to be a valuable addition to the
Student Teaching: Week 2 Review New Teachers by Joel Wagner - January 18, 2009June 30, 20105 So most schools have started their student teaching by now. If you know someone who has a blog and is student teaching this semester, please encourage them to contact me (or leave a comment) so that I can add their blog to my list. I was encouraged to read some of the great comments that came out on some of the posts from last week. Hopefully you can keep doing that this week. Here's what I found in the world of student teaching this week. Saturday January 10 G Broaddus was Reflecting on student teaching , week 1. He also writes about Myths in the teachers' lounge. Some good reflection, and some not-so-good reflection happens in there! Wish him
Personal Questions Personal by Joel Wagner - January 18, 2009June 30, 20104 Calebteaches got me thinking about this today. How old are you? Do you have a girlfriend? Do you have a MySpace? I love working with middle school kids. When I was teaching 6th grade, I got a lot of these weird questions. Now that I'm working with 7th & 8th graders, I get less of them, but the rumors become more elaborate. A couple of weeks ago, one of my 7th graders asked me if I was going out with a band director at another school in our district. I told her no. But as I thought about it, I realized this is probably the best rumor that I've ever heard floating around about me. Much better than the typical
Another List of Top EduBlogs Blogging & Technology by Joel Wagner - January 13, 2009June 30, 20105 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
Student Teaching: Week 1 Review New Teachers by Joel Wagner - January 10, 2009June 30, 20104 With the end of what for many is the first week of student teaching, I wanted to look around at some of the blogs out there written by student teachers. I expect my Student Teaching Project to grow over the course of the semester, but for now I want to look at all of the student teaching related posts I know of from this week. Sunday January 4 - Mr. Spurlin writes out his Student Teaching Resolutions in which he lays out some plans that he has for this upcoming semester. Monday January 5 - Mattie writes The First Day... sigh in which she notices teacher dress code, students who resemble some of her former classmates, and the language
The Busyness of Teaching New Teachers by Joel Wagner - January 7, 2009June 30, 20103 I love the week following Christmas break. The students (and teachers) have accustomed themselves to staying up late. Many of them woke up Monday morning earlier than they went to sleep Friday night/Saturday morning. As a result, Monday and Tuesday were sleep-deprived transition days. Classroom management was much simpler on those days than many days so far this year. I can't help but think of those poor student teachers who have started waking up before 10am for the first time in years. With college class schedules having 15 minute breaks built in on busy days and three or four hour gaps of relaxation time on the standard days, how are they handling the workload of a real 8-hour day? What
10 Keys To Unlocking The Best Possible Student Teaching Semester Ever New Teachers by Joel Wagner - January 4, 2009February 26, 20115 I am getting emails coming in and have some friends who are about to start student teaching. Many of them seem to be expressing the same fear about going into student teaching. As we quickly approach what will for many be the first week of student teaching, I thought it would be helpful to throw out these 10 keys to unlocking the best possible student teaching semester ever. I was fortunate that I had been teaching private lessons for three years already in the district where I student taught before I began. My school had a two semester process, with the first being mostly observation and the second being full internship. I spent far more than the required 8 hours
The Great Fish Fiasco of 2008 Blogging & Technology by Joel Wagner - January 3, 2009July 1, 20101 Go read my first publicly available narrative account of my teaching career. The Great Guest Fiasco of 2009 was just posted at Learn Me Good.