Less Stress: Increase Healthy Foods Stress Reduction by Joel Wagner - October 4, 2007July 5, 20100 Now that you have eliminated junk foods from your diet, it's time to replace them. So what kinds of foods should you replace them with? Well, I guess it all depends on what your goals are. I personally try to eat as many fruits and vegetables as I can reasonably get into my body each day. This means that I eat a salad or two nearly every day. Either for lunch or dinner, I will get one. Just that one simple step really helps me out as far as my mindset goes. For me, I have debated the idea of eating "sugar free" foods, but I just don't want to. I eat fruits as desserts and they do a good
Less Stress: Eliminate Junk Food Stress Reduction by Joel Wagner - October 3, 2007July 5, 20100 Junk Food. We hear the term tossed around all the time. What is junk food? Basically, it's any food that lacks substantial nutritional value. White flour is a perfect example. They take something healthy (wheat flour), bleach it, and kill any nutrients that may have been there. Fried foods are another example. Soft drinks and desserts also have loads of sugar (or comparable unhealthy sugar substitutes) in them. I used to eat them all the time. Since this school year began, I stopped. If it's yellowish in color, it wouldn't be a bad idea to avoid it! Tomorrow, we'll look at how I have replaced the junk food. In addition to drinking almost nothing by water, the elimination of junk
Less Stress: Wake Up Earlier Stress Reduction by Joel Wagner - October 2, 2007July 5, 20100 I used to wake up every morning about an hour before I wanted to be at school. I try to get there by 7:20, so that meant waking up around 6:20. That resulted in an extremely rushed morning. Plus the traffic at my new school is way heavier than the traffic was at my old school. I literally have to leave my house at 7 to make it there by 7:20. And I live less than 3 miles away... So I have gotten into the habit of waking up around 5:30 or earlier most mornings. This lets me have some time to stretch and get my body moving some before getting in the shower and not being rushed. I am
Less Stress: Drink Water Stress Reduction by Joel Wagner - October 1, 2007July 5, 20103 I used to drink sodas all the time. I drank Dr. Pepper numerous times daily while I was in junior high and high school. I "became smart" and started drinking Diet Coke when I got to college. Still, daily. I cut out caffeine from my diet last August but continued drinking Diet Sprite every day. Then I learned how important water is to the people of the world. I learned that most Americans are chronically dehydrated. So I tried it out beginning last Spring Break. I began drinking virtually nothing but water. I have eliminated all carbonated drinks from my dietary intake, as well as most juice and other non-carbonated drinks. I feel better. I have also learned that there
7 Pieces Of Financial Advice For A High School Student (Or Teacher!) General by Joel Wagner - September 30, 2007July 5, 20101 Trent at The Simple Dollar has an article entitled Seven Pieces Of Financial Advice For A High School Student. These guidelines apply to us al, but as teachers, it would be helpful if we pass along this information (perhaps indirectly) to our students. The entire article is awesome. The comments are also great. Go check it out! Do not carry a credit card balance Put a small amount in the bank each week and forget about it until you’re about to make a big purchase or a true emergency comes up Learn how to learn Start a side business Take a leadership position There is no such thing as a free lunch If you’ve discovered something you enjoy and
A Recipe For Less Stress Stress Reduction by Joel Wagner - September 29, 2007July 5, 20100 In preparing for my month-long series on 25 Tips For Less Stress, I realized that I left out a few key ingredients. If you follow all 25 tips listed, and leave out the foundational ingredients, you will still be under intense stress. If you follow the tips with little success, you may actually be under more stress at trying to figure out why they don't accomplish their goal! So today, we will look at the very first and most essential elements of a stress-free classroom. I have written on each of these issues at great depth previously. Below each ingredient are links to four of my articles that address this very issue. I also went to Google's cool Blog
25 Tips For Less Stress Stress Reduction by Joel Wagner - September 29, 2007July 5, 20102 Download the entire series in e-book format here This school year has been remarkably stress-free for me. As a middle school band director working with the non-varsity group, this is unheard of. I have come up with a list of 25 things I have done that have helped to make this happen. During the month of October, the busiest month of the year for people involved with Texas marching bands, I am going to spend each weekday writing very briefly on one of these tips. The articles will be much shorter than my normal articles, but they will be consistent. Drink Water Wake Up Earlier Eliminate Junk Food Increase Healthy Foods Kill Your TV Declutter Your Desk Declutter
Personal Update Personal by Joel Wagner - September 23, 2007July 5, 20102 No weekend wrapup last week. No weekend wrapup this week either. I'm sorry. I am being overwhelmed by work commitments as well as personal commitments. On a personal note, I preached in church last Wednesday and will preach again this Wednesday. That takes a lot of focus and study time, which really seems to make this blog suffer a bit. In addition, there are just a whole lot of things on my plate right now in the personal life. I'm doing fine, but I just need to take a little bit of time off from posting on here. Don't worry, much more good stuff will be coming back again in November and beyond. This is definitely turning out to be
My Education Background Classroom Management by Joel Wagner - September 22, 2007July 5, 20100 A long time ago, I was tagged by Miss A. I have some free time this morning as I get ready to go out of town with the HS band, so I thought I'd get around to this thing here... Is School 2.0 about technology or pedagogy (teaching methods)? Though I am not terribly familiar with the concept of School 2.0, it looks to be primarily about technology. Of course, I am not a big fan of new "teaching methods" and so anything that purports to be a new "teaching method" automatically raises a red flag for me. What were 1-3 things you had to”unlearn” to become an effective teacher? Wow, great question here. Don't try to
Calling Home Classroom Management by Joel Wagner - September 14, 2007July 5, 20102 I just recently read NYC Educator's article entitled, Startup Tips. Great stuff there. Neither she nor any teacher of education ever advised me on classroom control. The standing platitude was “A good lesson plan is the best way to control a class,” but I no longer believe that. I think a good lesson plan is the best thing to have after you control the class. ... The best trick, and it’s not much of a trick at all, is frequent home contact. It’s true that not all parents will be helpful, but I’ve found most of them to be. When kids know reports of their classroom behavior will reach their homes, they tend to save the acting out for your
5 Surefire Tips For Handling Misbehavior Classroom Management by Joel Wagner - September 12, 2007July 5, 201019 Laniza over at Walk Tall has posed the question, how do you handle students who continually test the rules? She writes: I have about 3-4 students in each of my classes that I'm going to have to keep a tight leash on, at least for the first couple of months. My response is that I find warnings basically give the kids a free pass to misbehave once before getting in trouble. I give a warning at the beginning of the year and from then on, any misbehavior is fair game to punishment. When I first was learning how to do it, I would have the kids call home and tell whoever answered the phone what they did. I learned quickly
Reader Feedback Blogging & Technology by Joel Wagner - September 11, 2007July 5, 20104 I spent Saturday morning playing catchup with a lot of work that I had allowed to pile up. One of the things I did was to move the graphic I received from Eric up to the top of my sidebar. I also added some new graphics and removed some information If you haven't looked at the main page on my blog, click on this post in your reader, click on Home at the top of my blog, and leave me some feedback about the graphics and stuff I added. I know that I have a handful of readers who frequently leave comments on here. You guys are awesome! I also know that I have a small army of readers who
Weekend Wrapup 09/10/07 Blogging & Technology by Joel Wagner - September 10, 2007July 5, 20100 Life remains busy, but I still seem to find time to get around to this post each week. If nothing more, at least there's something. I'm taking volunteers to guest blog over here during the busy months of September and October. As we get further into the month, things will do nothing but speed up in the band directing world... Ed U. Cater writes about how much he misses last year's students: A New Kind of Teaching Position. He writes of how much respect her has for us middle school teachers. I'm glad to make him proud. I just remind myself that elective teachers have the opportunity to kick the miscreants out and make them office aides or whatever else
Are You Still Out Of Control In Your Classroom? [VIDEO] Classroom Management by Joel Wagner - September 9, 2007June 16, 20162 I know some people who seem to have been born with an innate ability to get others to do things they really don't want to do. Those people, when asked how to do that, generally don't have an explanation. For them it is a natural skill. This isn't the case with most people. It is definitely not the case with me. I admit, it was never this bad for me, but it was bad. I had students talking back. I had students getting out of their seats. I had students writing notes. I'm sure if it were now, I would have had students sending texts throughout the class.I had to learn how to keep them quiet and get them to do
But I Don’t Have Time To Subscribe To Your Blog! Blogging & Technology by Joel Wagner - September 8, 2007July 5, 20106 I knew of RSS about five years ago, but only in the context of news sites. I started seeing the little icon popping up on more and more sites, but I thought very little of it. It wasn't until around a year ago that I was introduced to Google Reader. It revolutionized the way I get information online. If you have never really dug into RSS feeds much and you like to get information online, then it will do the same for you too. I didn't want to spend the time figuring out why I should be interested in this stuff. Then I found out that it's incredibly simple! Getting started in the world of RSS can all be explained