The Art of Teaching Beginning Band Music Education by Joel Wagner - July 5, 2008August 4, 201625 Greg recently commented on an article my site. As I typically do, I went to look at his blog Total Music Education and see what he's all about. His blog intrigues me. I didn't have time to read through his entire site, but what I can gather is that he is a music education student in Minnesota. He's still in school but is getting an opportunity to teach a local summer band camp. With the exception of his observation of the horn section in the camp, I haven't found anything on his blog that is offensive. Haha. Nevertheless, reading some of his experiences helped remind me how differently I see teaching beginning band now than I did when I was first starting
07-08: What To Change Next Year General by Joel Wagner - June 17, 2008June 25, 20162 As we begin the summer vacation, I am looking back on what went really well this year, what didn't work so well, and what needs to change for next year. Below are some of the changes that I intend to implement next year: Change the focus - Winning is not the only thing that matters. In fact, winning is absolutely fun, but so is doing something well. One of my college professors was a big proponent of the concept that you teach music for the sake of teaching music. He said that when you do it right, the results will follow. I never earned a sweepstakes trophy in all my years of band, even though I was in a really
Look Who’s Talking Now! General by Joel Wagner - April 7, 2008July 2, 20103 April is already shaping up to be a record-setting month for So You Want To Teach? We are well on our way to seeing 16,000 visitors or more this month. I am way behind on emails. Please forgive me! I am way behind on comments. I am way behind on reading other blogs. UIL is this Thursday. After that, things begin to resume some remote semblance or normalcy. Please don't expect me to begin catching up until Friday. The comments are taking off on here! I want to consider starting up a message forum and really transforming this site into a wealth of knowledge for teachers. I especially want to help out my new and prospective teacher buddies. According to
March 2007 Personal by Joel Wagner - March 1, 2008July 2, 20101 As we begin the month of March, I want to take a look back a year ago and see where my thoughts and focus were oriented. For me, this is productive as it helps me to see the progress, or more accurately the changes, that have happened over the last year. For me, this is productive as it helps me to see the progress, or more accurately the changes, that have happened over the last yearLast March I seem to have been really focusing on motivation (both with the students and with myself). This time of year can really begin to drag on, especially as we look to spring break and realize that there are few if any three day
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
152nd Carnival of Education Blogging & Technology by Joel Wagner - January 2, 2008July 2, 201012 Welcome to the January 2, 2008 edition of The Carnival of Education. I have been asked to host this party, so fasten your seat belts, tighten your shoelaces, batten down the hatches, and let the good times roll. How's that for a cliché riddled sentence? Last time I hosted, I got quite a few positive comments. So hopefully you will enjoy this time around as well. If this is your first time visiting my blog, welcome! I'd love it if you stick around, subscribe, and contribute to the conversations! Looking for somewhere to start, check out The Busiest Articles of 2007, then if you're in a real commenting mood, go visit the poor Overlooked Articles of 2007 and The Loneliest
The Busiest Articles of 2007 Blogging & Technology by Joel Wagner - December 26, 2007July 2, 20101 On Sunday, we looked back at some of The Loneliest Articles of 2007, today, we'll go to the other extreme and look at the busiest articles of 2007. 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 15 most commented articles. 148th Carnival of Education December 5th, 2007 (9 comments by 9 authors, 4 trackbacks) (13) The State of the Blog: 08/01/07 August 1st, 2007 (11 comments by 11 authors) (11) 5 Surefire Tips For Handling Misbehavior September 12th, 2007 (8 comments by 7 authors) (7) The Purpose Of A Personal Mission Statement July 26th,
The Loneliest Articles of 2007 Blogging & Technology by Joel Wagner - December 23, 2007July 2, 20100 In the Christmas break, I am looking back at this blog's growth and development. I began writing a little bit for the blog in February, but didn't officially launch it for real until June. Since that time, growth has been pretty consistent. I now seem to regularly get a small number of comments for every article I write, with some eliciting more than others. As I look through the blog's archive, it strikes me that there are some articles that have either been buried deep in the archives, or for whatever reason, have gone unnoticed by my readers. So I am giving all of those articles a chance to redeem themselves, come up to the light of day. Here is
One of THOSE Days Personal by Joel Wagner - December 14, 2007May 30, 20164 This may well be the first time I have written about my teaching life without really setting out a solution or providing much helpful information. Let me know what you think. Last Friday, the other band director I work with had a mild stroke. He is recovering and is at home resting now. The doctors told him to not return to work for six weeks. As you might imagine, Christmas is a terrible time for band directors to be out like this. I got to take his band on a Christmas Tour on Thursday, and my band today. We have to make arrangements with other band directors to come over from other campuses to cover the classes that are here and need
Weekend Wrapup 08/06/07 Blogging & Technology by Joel Wagner - August 6, 2007July 5, 20101 Today is my sister's birthday. Happy birthday Joel's sister. :) My birthday is also this Wednesday. It's not an education post, but the organization stuff covered is great. I love Zen Habits, and Leo once again hits a homerun here. How to Simplify Your Filing System; or, Why Stacking Just Doesn't Work. How many teachers need to read this one? I am specifically thinking about my high school and middle school English teachers here... John Pearson over at Learn Me Good has written his 300th blog post. It includes a wonderful review of his recently published book of the same name, Learn Me Good. I think I want to buy me a copy of that book. Or maybe John will
Finding Excellent Educators To Emulate General by Joel Wagner - June 5, 2007July 5, 20102 As my fifth year of teaching came to a close, I began thinking back on my teaching career. When I student taught, I had wonderful teachers to work with. I got to conduct a piece on the Christmas concert (in the semester I was supposed to be observing), and even got to fully rehearse one piece for the spring trip. That's not too common these days, from what I have gathered. So in that sense, I have been surrounded by great educators from the beginning. As teachers, we really need to consciously endeavor to surround ourselves with great educators. These can come in various ways, some of which are not what you might expect. The most obvious place Whatever
06-07: What Worked Well General by Joel Wagner - June 2, 2007July 5, 20100 As we begin the summer vacation, I am looking back on what went really well this year, what didn't work so well, and what needs to change for next year. Below are some of the positives about this year: Having a plan before the year beganEven before the school year began, I had a pretty decent idea of what music I wanted the kids to perform throughout the year. What this ended up doing is that it allowed me to gear the daily teaching to make sure that those goals could be accomplished. I had an idea of what Christmas music we wanted to do. That helped us to determine what skills were absolutely necessary, and which ones could wait