[INFOGRAPHIC] What Makes A Good Teacher In 2016? Inspiration by Joel Wagner - June 17, 2016July 5, 20160 According to ITN Mark Education, there are 7 key components of a good teacher. Love of the subject Stress Management Complete control Organization Professional behavior Expert instructional methods Praise It's interesting that through the years, I have written about each of these concepts on this blog. Below are links to a few articles with a brief quote from that article. From Burnout To Ignited Passion: How Blogging, Information Overload, and Running Made Me A Better Teacher So I have to get back to me being me. I inspire people simply by being me. You do too. But do yourself and me and everyone else a favor and go out there to be the most awesome, amazing, passionate version of you that you
Should Teachers Provide Great Customer Service? Classroom Management by Joel Wagner - June 16, 2016June 19, 20160 This is an updated version of one of the first articles written on this blog about treating education as a part of the customer service industry. The article was originally posted on February 24, 2007. It was edited and updated on June 15, 2016 to reflect a maturation in my approach to teaching as well as writing. You can read the original along with a handful of comments here. In the beginning When I was in college, I was assigned for one of my classes to write out 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 and it lacked depth. After all, I had not
A Step-By-Step Framework for Incremental Growth Inspiration by Joel Wagner - June 14, 2016June 14, 20162 I want you to watch the first 3:40 of this TED Talk by Benjamin Zander Notice the Dramatic change in the piano player from 7 years old to 11 years. Huge difference. But from 8 to 10, there is seemingly no change. What's happening is incremental change. Each year, the child improves dramatically, but it is not always evident, until BAM, it all seems to fall into place. Michael Hyatt writes about The Power of Incremental Change Over Time on his blog: I am not opposed to massive action. I have used it myself to achieve certain results. But it causes most people give up before they ever start. They just don’t think they can make the investment...What these people don’t realize is that they could
Quitting Teaching, A View From A Former Teacher General by Lucas Allen - June 13, 2016July 10, 20162 In this article Lucas Allen, a former math educator from Illinois writes about his experience quitting teaching and the transition into the corporate world. Why I Left About 18 months ago, I quit teaching for a job in the corporate world. This wasn't a decision I made lightly. I had been a high school mathematics teacher at a couple of different schools in downstate Illinois over the course of 13 years. Lest you think I was longtime disgruntled employee of the public school system, let me assure you that was not the case. Over the years, I had thrown myself into numerous school activities, coaching the chess team, the volleyball team, and my favorite, the math team, eventually coaching my team to the 2012 Illinois
Weekend Reading 6/11/16 General by Joel Wagner - June 11, 2016June 11, 20160 Over the past two weeks, I have jumped back into blogging. This week, I jumped back into Twitter (follow @sywtt). There's some great stuff going on out there in the world of education blogging. Here is a summary of what I found and shared this week. Response: Blended Learning Is 'the Next Generation of Education' 41 Books Worth Reading What Makes a Good Teacher? 36 Edtech Tools I'm Using Right Now in My Classroom and Life Blooming teachers 'Being a "sergeant major" teacher has been my most effective behaviour-management strategy 10 Ways to Flip a Kid and Turn Their Day Around “What Is My Job, Anyway?†Teacher Hindsight From a Multi-Classroom Leader Is your school’s “digital citizenship†practice
Teacher Turnover [Infographic] Why Teachers Quit by Joel Wagner - June 10, 2016June 16, 20160 According to recent studies, 30% of teachers quit teaching by the end of their second year of teaching. I am convinced that many of those cases would be avoided with proper support networks in place. I recently came across an infographic from 2013 by USC Rossier that addresses this issue in their blog post entitled How To Save Our Educators. What interests me about this is that it goes a bit further than simply acknowledging that teacher turnover is a problem from the standpoint of it being bad to lose educators, but also at the average cost to replace teachers ($12,500), the impacts on student achievement, and looking at some of the possible solutions. USC RossierOnline
5 Keys To Educating People – Revisited Inspiration by Joel Wagner - June 9, 2016June 15, 20160 This is an updated version of the first article written on this blog, which was originally posted on February 11, 2007. It was edited and updated on June 9, 2016 to reflect a maturation in my approach to teaching as well as writing. You can read the original along with a handful of comments here. 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 was not, mind you, because I was giving them wrong information. It was, however, because I had placed my priorities in the wrong order. When we have the proper perspective, we end up teaching far more than
Six Music Classroom Management Strategies Music Education by Joel Wagner - June 8, 2016June 15, 20160 I recently came across an article by Rachel Maxwell and Jessica Corry called Six Music Classroom Management Strategies. As I read through the list, I noticed many similarities to topics that I have covered frequently. If you find yourself teaching in a music classroom of any sort in the near future, I highly recommend checking out the original article. Teach, Model, and Reteach Routines Use Nonverbal Signals Keep Rules Simple Organize Your Space Play More, Talk Less Consistent Expectations
60 Very Practical Things I Wish I’d Known Before I Started Teaching General by Joel Wagner - June 7, 2016June 15, 20162 While I've had my ups and downs over the years as a teacher, my first two years were extremely challenging. Many of these pitfalls were avoidable. If I were going into a middle school band class as a first year teacher today, knowing what I know now, I would approach things differently. Here is an unsorted list that I have brainstormed of things I would like to have known before the first day of school. Begin class on time, every time Even though attendance is computerized, come up with a simple written system of checking role and do it consistently Run through each class period in your mind and take notes of questions you have; address those before the first day The more procedures
5 Steps That Took Me From “I Hate Teaching” To “I Love Teaching” New Teachers by Joel Wagner - June 5, 2016June 15, 20160 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 change TODAY. It did for me. Here's how. An introduction Without a question, one of the top search results that sends people to my blog is "I Hate Teaching." It was #2 over the past 12 months. #1 was "Classroom Management Skills", which is essentially "Help! Want To Love Teaching, But I Hate Teaching." So, since I actually do not hate teaching at this point, I used to. For this reason, and
Just A Little Bit: 29 Tweaks That Help Me Gain The Respect of My Students Classroom Management by Joel Wagner - May 30, 2016July 31, 20163 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 have come to view things. Those early years of struggle were good, and Lord knows I still continue to find my share of struggles, but as far as student respect, I generally find that I have a much easier time than I did once upon a time. Here is a quick list of things that work to help me gain respect from my students. They may not work for
Testing, Testing…Is This Thing On? Blogging & Technology by Joel Wagner - May 29, 2016June 15, 20160 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 to write something, but with the state of the website being as it was, that inspiration quickly turned to frustration. Until this month. The layout of this blog has been basically the same since 2009 when I paid to have a theme professionally built for it. That theme was nice and pretty, but a whole lot has changed in the world of web design over the
New Teacher Survey General by Joel Wagner - May 7, 2016July 29, 20160 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 survey. I'll share the results and the project with you when I'm finished. If that's not you, please pass this on to your new teacher friends. photo credit: 2016 Commencement via photopin (license)
Let’s Talk About…Finding A New Teaching Job General by Joel Wagner - July 2, 2014July 29, 20160 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 let's talk about it. I'm asking you to help out by contributing comments. I know, I know. Blogging has changed. People rarely ever leave comments any more, they just look for the like button or share it with their social media friends if it's a great post. Well, let's leave some comments and answer this question: What are some key elements to successfully finding a new teaching job?
Frozen And The Value of Quality [VIDEO] Music Education by Joel Wagner - March 17, 2014June 8, 20160 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 to gain a little bit of traction across the Internet. So I watched it. It was nice. It was cute. It was adorable. I shared it on Facebook. Then I began to think about it a bit more. So I watched the original and realized it was some parents lip-syncing their way through the movie soundtrack. Like what you or I have done in the bathroom