joel See if you can relate “I regret choosing this profession! I wish I was still back in college! I just want to go live at home and never have to work again! Oh wait, teaching provides insurance benefits, so I guess I’ll just stick it out.” Ever been there? It doesn’t have to be that way. This can all … Read more
Why don’t my students respect me? We’ve all been there at one time or another. For me, it was nearly every day during my first two years . Since then, I have grown as a teacher, but even as I look back on what I wrote in this blog eight years ago, I am struck by how differently I … Read more
It has been quite a while since I wrote anything on here. Life got busy, WordPress didn’t update correctly, Emails from the site overwhelmed me, and I basically was tired of the hassles that came along with the blog. So I pushed it to the back burner. I would feel inspired every once in a while … Read more
A previous version of this article did not include the link to the survey. That has been updated to simplify the process. I’m working on a project. If you are going to be starting your first or second year of teaching and would like to help me out by answering 5 questions for me, please complete this … Read more
Talk amongst yourselves This weekend, let’s discuss finding a new teaching job. It’s summer (in the northern hemisphere) and many of us are out of school. With the summer also comes many newly certified teachers, as well as veterans who are seeking greener pastures. Lots of us are looking, even if we are not seriously considering moving. So … Read more
So recently some friends of mine did a video of themselves singing Love Is An Open Door from the movie Frozen. It showed up as a blip on the radar, but I didn’t act on it until today. I saw their clip again, but this time it had been picked up on another website and was starting … Read more
This past summer was a whirlwind tour for me and someday I may share a bit about the amazing experiences I had traveling by myself across the country (including three nights stranded in airports, a fourth of July parade in a small town outside of Boston, following my beloved Texas Rangers to Saint Louis, New … Read more
This summer I made the decision to go on a somewhat extensive tour of a few of the major cities in the Northeast United States. During the process, I reconnected with my friend Nelson, with whom I marched drumcorps 17 years ago. I haven’t seen him in the intervening years and so it as been … Read more
I don’t care if it’s your teaching job or your personal habits or your social life or what it is, we all face burnout at one time or another. Or another or another or another. At times, I can feel like we are in a dark tunnel with no escape and we don’t have the … Read more
As I was going through some old paperwork a couple of weeks ago, I came across the binder that I used with my band three years ago. I remember that was a difficult year because the classes were terribly large. My first period brass class had somewhere around 60 students, and my second period woodwind … Read more