10 Years of Teaching: How Do I Keep My Students Interested?

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, … Read more

Why I Removed Comments From My Blog

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 … Read more

The Adaptive Unconscious: You Never Get A Second Chance To Make A First Impression

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 … Read more

20 Ways I Really Use My iPhone To Teach Band Class

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 … Read more

20 Classic SYWTT Articles And Series

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 … Read more

Flashback Friday

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 … Read more

10 WordPress 2.7 Hacks That Make My Blog Totally Rock Out

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 … Read more

Last Minute UIL Concert & Sight Reading Preparations: 10 Things I Am Doing To Try To Get Sweepstakes

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 … Read more

The Busiest Articles of 2008

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, … Read more