TGIF, That Means It’s Almost Monday! Music Education by Joel Wagner - January 22, 2009June 30, 20108 Please don't tell me this picture represents your views! As a teacher, and specifically as a band director, I am not a big fan of Mondays. As a worker, I really love Monday. Why? Great question. Why I don't like Mondays Kids generally don't practice over the weekend. This means that part of Monday is spent recovering and getting the band to sound the way I want it to sound again. Anecdotally, I find that the students are less focused on Mondays than they are on Wednesdays or Thursdays. Those days seem to be the best teaching days of the week. Often, I will plan my schedule with that assumption. More on that later. This week we didn't have school on
Not The Best Day Ever Revisited General by Joel Wagner - March 7, 2008July 2, 20102 A few weeks ago, I wrote about an experience I had where a student left my classroom crying and went to talk with the counselor. Read about it here. Be sure to read the comments below the article also! Since then, I apologized. I also made the commitment to slow down my teaching style. I wanted to take a chance to revisit that incident and follow up on some of the things that have happened since then, as well as some of the aftermath. On the Monday morning following the weekend when I had decided to slow things down, I was amazed and surprised to see the other band director walk in just before the percussion class. I left this
Apologizing General by Joel Wagner - February 21, 2008July 2, 20103 So on Tuesday, I wrote about an incident I had where I was awfully sarcastic with a student and it upset him. I received some great comments. The conversation is continuing over there. If you haven't chimed in, now would be a great time to do so. And better yet, subscribe to receive comments so you don't have to keep going back to check and recheck. So what did I do? How did I respond on Wednesday? Well, basically, I started out the percussion class by having them all sit in a row. I got them quiet and talked with them some. I asked them what some things were that they would change. As I expected, the most common responses