He Is Risen: Our Greatest Hope General by Joel Wagner - April 4, 2010June 30, 20100 Who has believed our report? And to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed? For He shall grow up before Him as a tender plant, And as a root out of dry ground. He has no form or comeliness; And when we see Him, There is no beauty that we should desire Him. He is despised and rejected by men, A Man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. And we hid, as it were, our faces from Him; He was despised, and we did not esteem Him. Surely He has borne our griefs And carried our sorrows; Yet we esteemed Him stricken, Smitten by God, and afflicted. But He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised
No Kidding… General by Joel Wagner - April 1, 2010June 30, 20101 Sorry, no April Fools Day jokes from me this year. But I am actually posting a little bit. Last night, I took my band to the UIL Concert and Sight-Reading contest and we got a Sweepstakes trophy. This means that at least two of the three judges for our concert program and two of the three judges for our sight-reading agreed that our band played superior and earned a first division. I'm so proud of them! Contact me via email and ask me for the link to the recordings. I have done a ton of thinking about this blog lately and I am determined that I will once again enable comments soon. I have the old ones, but I am
Cut the Cord Personal by Joel Wagner - February 27, 2010June 30, 20100 For the first time since started my blog three years ago, I am going to be taking a break for at least a month. No writing, no checking stats, no emails, no nothing. In fact, I'm pulling the plug on my cable modem as soon as I finish writing this. This is not just a blog issue, but I am going to be away from Facebook almost entirely for a month. In fact, I deleted Facebook from my phone a couple of weeks ago and noticed a substantial improvement to my productivity at work. My free time isn't spent checking to see who else is slacking off at work, but rather in avoiding the temptation to slack myself. I've
7 Ways To Impress Your College Professor New Teachers by Liz Cutten - February 21, 2010June 30, 20100 This is a guest post by Liz Cutten, who helps run FindCollegeCards, a college student blog that helps students learn about everything college. All college professors are different, but what you’re going to find out is that all of them are human, and many of them are going to be impressed by the same things. I went to college over 6 years, and what I had found out is that most professors will honestly look at the good students in a different way, compared to those that are bad. Now, I know when you read the title, you’re probably thinking, “I don’t want to be suck up!”, and that’s fine. I’m not writing this to show you
Trials Turn To Gold Inspiration by Joel Wagner - February 18, 2010June 30, 20100 Are you at the bottom of a pit? Maybe you're in a place you never thought you would be. Or you never thought you'd be there again. I can't count the number of times I've fallen into a bad habit in teaching. I allow myself to get bogged down with paperwork instead of taking care of it right away. Students ask me questions at the beginning of class and I forget the six magic words that liberate me: "I'm not answering questions right now." Oh, you've done it too... Positive changes come and go like the wind most of the time. How do we stick it out and truly persevere? If you know the answer to this question, write a
Seven Deadly Sins of Veteran Teachers General by Joel Wagner - February 10, 2010June 30, 20100 So here's the situation: You've been teaching for quite a while. You've pretty much gotten a handle on classroom management, paperwork, classroom rules, and any number of the other day-to-day tasks we encounter. But how many of these teaching vices do you struggle with? I know I'm not guiltless in these areas. In fact, I've had run-ins with most of these. Not all of them, of course. Luxuria (extravagance or lust) While most people think of lust in a sexual kind of way, in the original context, it essentially meant excessive love of others. Even so, some teachers take this one quite literally and end up losing their jobs over abusive relationships with their students. Gula (gluttony)Gluttony is typically
Three Years of So You Want To Teach? Blogging & Technology by Joel Wagner - February 9, 2010June 30, 20100 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
8 Great Websites for Listening to Recordings of Band Contest/Festival Music Music Education by Joel Wagner - January 31, 2010June 30, 20100 The world of band directing has changed over the past few years as a result of the increasing pace of technological development. Back then Contest preparation when I first started teaching way back in August of 2002 went something like this: I began by digging through the CDs that I picked up each year at music conventions to find recordings of some of the band music that might be available. Then I picked up my copy of the UIL Prescribed Music List to see what was on the list. At this point, I went back to the recordings and tried to find whichever of the tunes I had on CD so I could listen. If a friend recommended a piece
Simplicity In Life: Tying Up Loose Ends And Eliminating Stress Inspiration by Joel Wagner - January 23, 2010June 30, 20100 Look around you. How many unrealized plans do you see? How much unfinished business do you have sitting on your desk at work waiting for you in the morning? What about ungraded papers, unread emails, un-thrown-away junk mail? Maybe paperwork isn't your problem. Maybe it's a half-finished basement, a bathroom renovation gone sour, a fence in the back yard that needs to be adjusted. Or you have bill collectors hounding you. Or you aren't contributing enough (or anything) to your retirement plan. Or you are in debt out your eyeballs. Or you're still lugging around that extra 5 pounds that you've been meaning to lose (or the 75 pounds that has grown as you've been ignoring it for the last
Why I Removed Comments From My Blog Blogging & Technology by Joel Wagner - January 18, 2010June 30, 20100 This evening, I decided to do something I've been toying around with since the summer. I finally deleted comments from my blog entirely. Where it all began I began this blog as a hobby back in the spring of 2007, shortly after I began to learn more about the potential that blogs held. Life was much simpler back then. For one thing, I taught 6th grade beginning band only. My obligations outside of school were minimal, and the amount of time I spent in front of the computer was similarly low. Life was much simpler back then. I long for that again. Where it has taken me In the fall of 2007, I moved to the middle school where I
Running and Reading Inspiration by Joel Wagner - January 9, 2010June 30, 20101 Since I have decided this new year to slowly end my hatred of running that I have harbored for the past decade or so, I'm reading more about it. I am inspired to find there are a handful of pretty good health and fitness blogs that my school hasn't blocked on the network yet too! My conference period can now be spent walking, reading, or actually doing productive things for my band! Today I have been catching up on some of the Twitter links I've seen and came across 13 Most Inspirational YouTube Videos of All-Time that Angela Maiers had sent out a few days back. I was really impressed by this video. I was so impressed that I
Disgusted with DISQUS Blogging & Technology by Joel Wagner - January 9, 2010June 30, 20102 I tried the alternative comment system DISQUS for a few months here and have just grown tired of it. Since installing it in October, I have noticed: A decrease in the number of relevant comments on my blog An increase in the number of spammy comments that get approved An increase in the number of complaints about the difficulty of commenting on my blog A substantial increase in the the time it takes for pages on my site to load I turned off DISQUS commenting this morning and while I lost a number of comments that have been posted to my site, I also notice that some of the comments posted on DISQUS actually were preserved. I also
Dissection of a Band Director Music Education by Joel Wagner - January 8, 2010June 30, 20100 I saw this cartoon posted on The Yellow Board yesterday and thought some of my musician-type readers wouldappreciate it. The cartoon is by John Bogenschutz (www.johnmusic.com). Over the Christmas Break, a few of the band directors from around the area got together and played some quartets around town. I'm the only one who has played seriously since college, and it's been about 5 months since I did that too. We were all suffering by the time we got to the end of our gigging. So the "Wonders how much longer he can keep his streak of not touching an instrument going" comment really made me crack up when I first saw it. Anyway, I hope you enjoy Dissection of a
Goal-Setting 101: 4 Essential Elements of All Life-Altering Goals Inspiration by Joel Wagner - January 5, 2010June 30, 20100 In the past I've come up with New Year's Resolutions, and more recently Visions for the Year. They sort of helped to guide the first four to six weeks of the year, but rarely have lasted much beyond that. This year is different. This year I'm for real. I've decided to create a BHAG - a Big, Hairy, Audacious Goal - for myself. I am making active steps in moving forward on the goal, and I am setting myself up to either win big or fail big. It will not be a quiet ending, whichever way things pan out. But I'm getting ahead of myself. The first thing I'll do is go over the basics of goal-setting, and then give
Can Wii Do It? Personal by Joel Wagner - January 4, 2010June 30, 20100 Carol Richtsmeier made me do it. She has pretty much shamed me (guilted me perhaps?) into blogging through my weight loss this year with her. I'm doing it because I want to run a 5K. She's doing it because she's tired of dragging along the extra baggage. Well, me too. She's done all of the legwork and I'll do some design work when I get a chance, but she's set up a blog call Can Wii Do It? to track our progress. I suggested there might be others who would be interested in blogging through their journey (either with a Wii or without). If you are, she would probably be the person to contact since she's doing most of the