10 Years of Teaching: How Do I Keep My Students Interested? Inspiration by Joel Wagner - June 9, 2012June 16, 20160 Five years ago, I wrote a series of seven articles called “Questions That Will Save Your Career†that still remain among the most visited articles on this site. When I wrote those, I had successfully completed my 5th year in education. This summer, after 10 years, I am revisiting some of these older concepts. Today, I revisit How Do I Keep My Students Interested? How Do I Keep My Students Quiet? How Do I Keep My Students Engaged? How Do I Keep My Students Interested? How Do I Keep My Students Learning? How Do I Keep My Students Away From Me? How Do I Keep My School Administration Happy? How Do I Keep My Sanity? 10 Years of Teaching: How
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
The Adaptive Unconscious: You Never Get A Second Chance To Make A First Impression General by Joel Wagner - November 1, 2009June 30, 20105 Yesterday, I picked up a copy of Malcolm Gladwell's book Blink (purchase on Amazon). Dave Ramsey has been recommending his latest book Outliers (purchase on Amazon) on his radio show lately but when I got to Barnes & Noble, I realized Blink was available in paperback and so was therefore quite a bit less expensive. I've heard Dave recommend it before, so I decided to go with the less costly alternative. I began reading it this afternoon and came across the following paragraph on pages 12-13: Whenever we meet someone for the first time, whenever we interview someone for a job, whenever we react to a new idea, whenever we're faced with making a decision quickly and under stress, we use
20 Ways I Really Use My iPhone To Teach Band Class Blogging & Technology by Joel Wagner - September 12, 2009October 3, 20104 On the day that the iPhone 3G was released, I rushed out to the local AT&T Store to pick up my very own. I was excited, so I rushed home and wrote 10 Awesome iPhone Apps (Band Director Style) and listed all of the cool things that I was going to download and use in class. Well, a year has passed and things have changed somewhat. So I thought I'd go back and look at the list. I was somewhat surprised to see how it has changed and how some of those apps never panned out to be what I thought they would be. Even so, I am thrilled at the purchase of my iPhone and continue to find it extremely
20 Classic SYWTT Articles And Series General by Joel Wagner - July 2, 2009May 29, 20161 If this is your first time visiting this site, or even if you’ve been reading for a while, there are undoubtedly some articles that you’ve missed along the journey. As I have been working a lot on organizing the site lately, it has come to my attention that there are over 400 posts on the site. This can be kind of daunting for a new reader to say the least. These are some of my favorite articles and series that I’ve written on the site. If you’ve read these, maybe you could check in and respond to a comment or two! Questions That Will Save Your Career Where Have All The Good Teachers Gone? The Best Time To Be A Teacher?
Flashback Friday General by Joel Wagner - May 1, 2009June 30, 20101 I've been thinking lately about trying to have each day be a sort of theme day. I don't intend on posting every day (that's not realistic for me at this time), but I would like for things to be a bit better aligned. So for instance, if I write a list article, I'll schedule it for the next available Monday. If I have a blogging article, I'll schedule it for the next available Wednesday. Or something along those lines. Here's the ideas I've come up with: Monday Music Monday - I am a band director. I haven't posted a whole lot about teaching band. I would like to overcome that and really begin to place a bit more emphasis on the
10 WordPress 2.7 Hacks That Make My Blog Totally Rock Out Blogging & Technology by Joel Wagner - April 20, 2009June 30, 20101 This post has absolutely nothing to do with teaching or education. It's totally about blogging. More specifically, WordPress. If you have not yet discovered the wonders of WordPress, I recommend checking it out sometime. With that disclaimer out of the way, I'll start out by listing the hacks that I have done, explaining why I did them, and then explaining how I went about adding them. Here goes: Added a featured article Put Featured & Latest images on home page only Thumbnails of all images in main and archive pages Moved most ads to search visitors only Added social media links to individual posts and searches Retweet button Reader submitted links page Added links to the footer and
Last Minute UIL Concert & Sight Reading Preparations: 10 Things I Am Doing To Try To Get Sweepstakes Music Education by Joel Wagner - March 29, 2009June 30, 20108 This Thursday, I will be taking my Middle School band to our UIL Concert & Sight Reading contest. For those who don't understand how the band world works (and even for those who don't understand Texas UIL), here's sort of how it works. How UIL works I will be taking them to perform a concert program of three pieces that we've been working on since February. Following the concert, we go to the sight reading contest. In that, each band is allotted a certain amount of time to look at a brand new piece of music. As a director, I can spend the first part (four minutes for my band) talking them through it and pointing out key changes, accidentals,
Personal Questions Personal by Joel Wagner - January 18, 2009June 30, 20104 Calebteaches got me thinking about this today. How old are you? Do you have a girlfriend? Do you have a MySpace? I love working with middle school kids. When I was teaching 6th grade, I got a lot of these weird questions. Now that I'm working with 7th & 8th graders, I get less of them, but the rumors become more elaborate. A couple of weeks ago, one of my 7th graders asked me if I was going out with a band director at another school in our district. I told her no. But as I thought about it, I realized this is probably the best rumor that I've ever heard floating around about me. Much better than the typical
The Busiest Articles of 2008 Blogging & Technology by Joel Wagner - December 26, 2008July 1, 20100 On Wednesday, we looked back at some of The Loneliest Articles of 2008, today, we’ll go to the other extreme and look at the busiest articles of 2008. These are the articles that generated the most comments. I’ve gone through the articles and found those that received the most comments. After boiling down that list, I have come up with the 20 most commented articles. Teaching: Part Time Job At Full Pay Wages???? July 2nd, 2008 (28 comments by 26 authors) (28) Double Your FeedBurner RSS Numbers Overnight January 27th, 2008 (13 comments by 10 authors, 14 trackbacks) (27) The First Ever Music Education Blog Carnival July 1st, 2008 (12 comments by 11 authors, 8 trackbacks) (20) 152nd Carnival
Life Lesson 1: Experience Is The Best Teacher Personal by Joel Wagner - August 12, 2008August 5, 20163 This article is the first in a series of "life lessons" exploring some of the things that I have learned over the years. In this one, we explore the concept that experience is the best teacher. Life has with it certain milestones that we reach and we stop briefly to analyze where we are going and where we have been. I recently turned 30 years old and have been thinking quite a bit about a great many topics. I think I will occasionally share some with the readers of So You Want To Teach? as I think they may prove helpful for others. Experience is the best teacher As much as we like to claim otherwise, most of the greatest learning that happens in
Freedom And 50 Other Things That Make Me Happy Personal by Joel Wagner - July 4, 2008July 1, 20102 Freedom from oppression Doing what I love and making money for it Freedom of faith The Bible Hymns My family My friends My dogs My home My blog Clarinet Learning The opportunity to learn Dave Ramsey My iPod My laptop Summer "break" Spring break Christmas break Trumpet My students Making music Mariachi Text messages My iPhone 3G that I'll be rewarding myself with next week WordPress The color blue Enchiladas Cheesecake Texas Drum & Bugle Corps Preaching Teaching Accomplishing things Creating things The feeling of being organized Water Horn Making progress Learning to play golf IHOP Winter Rain Clouds Happy memories Abstract Art Shostakovich The look on someone's face when they are learning something The look on someone's face
Whitespace General by Joel Wagner - March 15, 2008July 2, 20106 Have you noticed that People really don't like As I prepare my bands for the UIL Concert & Sight Reading contest that is now less than a month away, I have noticed that they seem to have a big problem with rests. For the uninitiated, rests in music represent silence. If I reduce the amount of noise that I make, my students will be more likely to hear the important things I tell them As I was talking with one of the classes on Friday about the incredible importance of the rests, I made a correlation about how we don't like rests because people really don't like silence. In the visual arts, typography, and graphic
Hyper-Focus Fosters Higher Quality Output Blogging & Technology by Joel Wagner - February 11, 2008July 2, 20107 Get your commenting skills ready, there's lots of material to be discussed here. I will be offline for most of this coming week and would love to hear the thoughts of my readers on these subjects. This week, I will be traveling to San Antonio for the annual Texas Music Educators Association clinic and convention. I'm excited. That convention marks the beginning of the heavy push as we prepare for the UIL Concert & Sight Reading contest, which will be held in early April. It also signifies the end of my relaxed life. The next two months will be extremely hectic and crowded for me as I focus on making sure that everything is taken care of as I prepare
Loving My Job; Hating My Work Personal by Joel Wagner - January 18, 2008July 2, 20108 Even if you ignore the majority of this article, check out the last sentence. I am absolutely loving school since coming back from Christmas Break. Even so, I am beginning to get burned out. If you want to know why, go read this. He's still not back yet and it's all but certain that he will not be coming back next week either. Still no clue when I can expect him.I wrote an email to my principal today, some edited excerpts follow: I love teaching and I love rehearsing the bands, but I am very tired. The students suffer as a result. More than anything else, that is what breaks my heart about the whole situation. It’s not that I