10 Design Changes I Did To My WordPress Blog This Month Blogging & Technology by Joel Wagner - June 28, 2010June 30, 20100 If you haven't stopped by the actual website for So You Want To Teach? in a few months, er weeks, er days, er hours, you may not recognize it. I have used my summertime to really put in some solid effort into adjusting the layout of the blog. I haven't done a full-on redesign since March of 2009. Since that time, I've added a few widgets here and something else over there, but never really spent a lot of concentrated time really thinking about the layout of the blog. Until recently. How it all began Quite frankly, I got bored of looking at the blog each day. I had some stuff there that just really didn't make sense. It was more cluttered
The Years Are Building Blocks: Part Two New Teachers by Drew - June 8, 2010June 30, 20100 This is a guest post by Drew, who currently teaches 7th Grade Texas History in the San Antonio area, where he has taught since 2004. Here I discovered the proper use of multimedia and how proper procedures can help ensure mental well-being. 3. Movies – I have used movies in the past, but mostly to kill time. This year, I wrote some great questions for the movies I used. I suppose I set my expectations higher as far as how I used movies like ‘The Alamo’ or ‘National Treasure 2’. My students compared the information from our textbook to how Hollywood presents historical facts. Kudos to Nicolas Cage for the ‘hysterical’ side of the facts. 4. Procedures – I have
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?
50 Online Reference Sites for Teachers New Teachers by Karen Schweitzer - March 10, 2009July 28, 20167 Finding time to go to the library or conduct research for the classroom can be downright impossible for a busy teacher. Fortunately, there are plenty of reference materials on the web that can guide educators to lesson plans and other resources that can be used in the classroom. This article presents 50 online reference sites that would be useful to almost any teacher. Karen Schweitzer is a writer for TeachingDegree.org, a site that specializes in information on teaching degrees. Here are 50 online reference sites that would be useful to almost any teacher: General Reference Sites The Educator's Reference Desk - The Educator's Reference Desk is an extremely valuable online reference site for teachers. Specific features include lesson plans, teaching tips, and information about
Restoring Hope To Your Teaching Job Inspiration by Joel Wagner - October 7, 2008June 5, 20164 I've noticed something lately. I have gotten a handful of comments and emails from people who seem to be teaching in what appears outwardly as a hopeless situation. I contend that the problem very rarely is in their situation. The problem rests in the lost joy and the long forgotten hope they once had. The dream is not shattered, it simply is not in sight right now. Why have we lost sight of that hope? Because we lack focus. My assertion is that we have lost focus because we are too busy reacting to events and items that try to wrestle our attention away from the important things. Jonathan wrote a great article about dealing with your mailbox last week. I think
If You Only Make One Change This School Year…RELAX!!!!!! Stress Reduction by Joel Wagner - September 28, 2008August 5, 20167 Nothing in the classroom is worth added stress in your life. Nothing. If you only make one change this school year...Relax! I know so many band directors (and other teachers as well, but mostly band directors) who get so incredibly worked up over their jobs that they lose their health, marriage, youthful physique, energy, or alienate their own children. Why? Because of their own selfish pride. Just because nothing catastrophic happens this year doesn’t mean that nothing will. Stress can be cumulative in your life and may be building up and festering over a period of a handful of years. The best solution is to stop. Now. How do we avoid stress? I have written at great length about this in the past, so instead of
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
5 Blogging Surprises of 2007 Blogging & Technology by Joel Wagner - December 28, 2007July 2, 20101 This blog has brought some exciting and unexpected things into my life. In this article, I'll discuss some of the biggest surprises that have come about as a result of this. A brief background It was about a year ago that I first began to really get into blogging. I knew of blogs and actually had a few on livejournal and myspace for a few years. I was vaguely aware of RSS back in 2002 when it first came on the scene and began to gain some popularity. I just had never really gotten into the whole blogging thing. I began reading blogs some and started learning. I was inspired. But I still never ventured into the "edublogosphere." In February,
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 State of the Blog: 10/13/07 Blogging & Technology by Joel Wagner - October 13, 2007July 5, 20100 Recent housekeeping issues I have decluttered my sidebar much more Moved a lot of stuff to the footer I added a graphical link in the "Features" to 25 Tips For Less Stress I added a question mark logo thing at the top of each article, which links here I added a favicon that should be showing up in the address bar I moved all of the Blogroll links to a separate page I added links to a few Social Bookmarking sites onto each post I added tags and a tag cloud at the top of the site Many of these things happened last weekend. Just in time... This has been a crazy week for So You Want To
Less Stress: Declutter Your Car Stress Reduction by Joel Wagner - October 12, 2007July 5, 20101 If we've been following the stress reduction tips so far, we now have a clean desk at work, a clean computer desktop at work and home, we have begun to organize our email habits, and our house is beginning to look nicer. All of those things can be great, but if we have a 30 minute commute to and from work each day, a messy car will only take away from those efforts. I have a 5 minute commute, and when my car is messy, it bothers me. Keeping the car under control is a pretty simple process of simply bringing things inside after each trip. As with everything this week, the problem comes in actually establishing those habits. Other
Less Stress: Declutter Your Inbox Stress Reduction by Joel Wagner - October 10, 2007July 5, 20100 We now have our Desk and Desktop under control. But how do we keep them under control? Better yet, how do we keep from having too much stuff coming into our lives that we allow to become clutter? Email Inbox Something that many teachers can't seem to figure out is how to archive their old emails. Instead, they just leave them all in the inbox. I was at an inservice and the presenter apologized to one of the other teachers because she had been gone for a few days and overlooked the teacher's email because it got lost in the shuffle. She didn't get around to it until two weeks later. That's just plain inexcusable! So how do we avoid
Less Stress: Declutter Your Desktop Stress Reduction by Joel Wagner - October 9, 2007July 5, 20100 Yesterday, we began decluttering our desk. Today, we will declutter our desktop. One of the things that drives me crazy is when I install a new program and it leaves all sorts of icons on my desktop. It also drives me crazy when I have all sorts of popup notifications in my Windows taskbar telling me everything that I don't need to know. These are nonurgent situations presenting themselves as though they were urgent. It disrupts my life and it's something that I finally decided to put a stop to. I am not going to attempt to reinvent the wheel on this one. I have found some great articles that thoroughly go through processes for getting things organized. What
Zen Habits Interview Blogging & Technology by Joel Wagner - October 8, 2007July 5, 20101 I want to extend a special welcome to all of the new visitors coming to me from Zen Habits. I am in the midst of a series this month on Stress Reduction Tips. These tips are specifically geared toward educators, but can be applied in practically any setting. I hope you'll stick around. On the very same day that I wrote an article on decluttering your desk, Leo at Zen Habits has posted the first in his series on reader success stories. I am thrilled to be one of his featured reader success stories. His blog has over 18,000 readers. That's huge! Though I don't look nearly as cool as Blain does, I woke up this morning to find that
25 Tips For Less Stress Stress Reduction by Joel Wagner - September 29, 2007July 5, 20102 Download the entire series in e-book format here This school year has been remarkably stress-free for me. As a middle school band director working with the non-varsity group, this is unheard of. I have come up with a list of 25 things I have done that have helped to make this happen. During the month of October, the busiest month of the year for people involved with Texas marching bands, I am going to spend each weekday writing very briefly on one of these tips. The articles will be much shorter than my normal articles, but they will be consistent. Drink Water Wake Up Earlier Eliminate Junk Food Increase Healthy Foods Kill Your TV Declutter Your Desk Declutter