The Dip Inspiration by Joel Wagner - May 27, 2007July 5, 20100 It came in the mail on Friday. I read it on Saturday. This was my first opportunity to read a book by Seth Godin, and I sure was not disappointed. "The Dip: A Little Book That Teaches You When To Quit (And When To Stick)" and that's exactly what it is. Although Mr. Godin is primarily an internet marketing guru, the book can easily be applied to anything we do in life. Anything from relationships to business to where you are teaching to even overall career choice -- it's covered here. The book is broad in scope, and can be applied to any and all of these areas. At 76 pages (and not very tall pages at that), this baby
Sharpen The Saw Personal by Joel Wagner - May 26, 2007July 5, 20100 In his book, The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, Stephen Covey refers to Habit #7 as "Sharpen The Saw." As teachers, the summer vacation offers us a structured time to do just that. Here is a list of some things that I intend to do with myself this summer: Move to my new office Reread The Seven Habits Of Highly Effective People Reread How To Win Friends And Influence People Read Getting Things Done (GTD) Make lists of what worked this year and what didn't work Revise my educational philosophy accordingly Revise my band handbook Set up a website for my band Add lots of cool content to the website Write an ebook Post to this blog DAILY
Be The Best Teacher In The World Inspiration by Joel Wagner - May 19, 2007June 19, 20164 Dave Ramsey recently wrote an article entitled High-Performance Achievement and it's about his training to run of a marathon. In this article, we're going to look at how you can use that knowledge to help you become the best teacher in the world. In Seth Godin's latest book, "The Dip" (which I'm going to read this summer), he talks about being the best in the world. That term is defined basically as the best in your sphere of influence at doing what you do. My goal as a band director is to be the best band director in my school district. Then my goal is to have the best band at whatever competition we go to. Then my goal is to have
4 Ways To Effectively Deal With Important People Personal by Joel Wagner - April 22, 2007March 13, 20144 If work just isn't seeming to work out for you, maybe you are focusing your attention in the wrong place. Here is a list of the people in the educational world of your school who should get the most attention. Students Parents Secretaries Assistant Principal(s) Principal Counselors Other Teachers In Your Department Custodians The Rest Of The Teachers So how do we do this? Here are four areas that I have had success focusing on. Develop basic social skills Much of what I have learned about social interaction was learned when I was 21 years old and read How To Win Friends And Influence People by Dale Carnegie. Trent from The Simple Dollar covers 9 social skills to practice here. These are priceless and really should be common sense. But as Dave Ramsey points
8 Methods For Recruiting People Into Your Program Music Education by Joel Wagner - April 21, 2007July 5, 20100 As a band director dealing with beginning band, a substantial part of my energy each year is spent on recruiting 5th graders to be in band next year. I have generally done a pretty good job getting kids enrolled in the program, but this year I began to look at it from a marketing standpoint. The results have been incredible. We still have some more recruiting to go, but we have already increased the enrollment by about 35 from what it was at this point last year, and it looks like it may very well be more than 60 more students next year than we have this year. That's huge. We still have some marketing left to do in the
4 Tip’s For Being Respected Personal by Joel Wagner - April 1, 2007July 5, 20104 An Alarming Trend One of the things that I have come to realize is that, by and large, educators have a poor grasp of grammar and spelling. Maybe this is isolated to the United States, but part of me fears that is not the case. Since nearly all of my adult life has been spent in educational circles, I have no first-hand knowledge of other fields. It amazes me how often I get emails from secretaries, teachers, and even administrators which contain a remarkably poor grasp of the English language. The sad part is that it's often not accidental. They reuse the same misspellings throughout the same email, or even repeat them in further correspondence. But The Problem Is
Do You Run The Risk of Becoming Successful? Inspiration by Joel Wagner - March 21, 2007July 6, 20160 The time from spring break to the end of the school year often seems like a battle between students and teachers to see who is most ready for the summer to begin. One of the teachers I worked with in my first job was fond of saying, "When you look forward to Monday more than Friday, you run the risk of becoming successful." I find this to be true in most anything. Success comes on the heels of both starting well and finishing strongly. When you look forward to Monday more than Friday, you run the risk of becoming successful.Applied to the teaching profession, I have come to the point where I look forward to the beginning of the school day
How Not To Waste Spring Break (or Summer Vacation, or Christmas Break, or Saturday, or Tonight!) Inspiration by Joel Wagner - March 8, 2007July 6, 20164 "I'm bored" No success will come from squandering time. Time is too precious to waste. The summer months and holiday weekend that we are afforded in the education business should not become an excuse to catch up on all the latest greatest movies and pack away the bon bons. Instead, these times seem to be best spent by analyzing where things stand with your current teaching position. What has worked so far this year? What will work better if I start doing it after the break? If it's summer, how can I start out the school year more prepared than I did last year? So what will I be doing over spring break?Another good thing to do is catch up on house
6 Motivation Techniques Inspiration by Joel Wagner - March 2, 2007June 29, 20164 Embed from Getty Images "What are you doing to motivate them?" I was talking with a friend this afternoon about her class. She is a second year teacher. She taught elementary last year and is teaching seventh grade this year. What a change! In the process of our conversation, I asked her, "what are you doing to motivate them?" She had no clue. Why motivate? Without motivation, your class is just another block of time that the students have to suffer through. With motivation, you hear things like "hi, favorite teacher!"Â and "I love this class!" As a teacher, those are the kinds of things that we absolutely love to hear. They say that about half of all teachers stop teaching before their sixth year.
A Customer Service Oriented Classroom Experience Classroom Management by Joel Wagner - February 24, 2007June 15, 201611 In The Beginning When I was in college, I had an assignment for one of my classes. The assignment was to write up my own philosophy of education. It was somewhat noble ("I teach children to be better people through music" or something like that). It was substantially trite. Most importantly, it lacked any passion behind it. The Interview In my very first teaching job interview, the principal interviewing me asked me what my educational philosophy was. I gave some sort of flimsy answer because I wasn't prepared for the interview. He gave me a chance later on to ask me if I had any questions. I asked him what his educational philosophy was. What he said has stuck with me ever since. He
Classroom Management: The Key To Your Success Classroom Management by Joel Wagner - February 14, 2007July 31, 20160 Above all else that you do in education, classroom management skills will pay greater dividends. I cannot tell you how much more teaching I actually get done now that I have learned how to get and keep children quiet. This one skill was the single thing that prevented me from being useful at all during my first two years as a teacher. This one skill was the single thing that allowed me to be supremely useful in my third year of teaching. No matter what you do, do not underestimate the value of spending time learning and refining classroom management skills. No other educational endeavor will be as fruitful.
5 Keys To Educating People Inspiration by Joel Wagner - February 11, 2007July 25, 20164 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. When I first got into the business of education, my priority was to educate children. So my philosophy could be summarized as: Educate When we have the proper perspective, we will end up teaching far more than we ever imagined we might teach.Not bad, but