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
Hurricane Ike Personal by Joel Wagner - September 13, 2008July 1, 20104 I got an email from one of the readers concerned about me and Hurricane Ike. No, I'm nowhere near the huge hurricane, though I do have some friends who are in the area. At least one of them is pretty much directly in the path of the hurricane, and he decided to stay home. I talked with him a few times yesterday. Over on the Texas-Mexico border, there is not a single drop of rain, so life is going on as normal. We had a middle school football game on Thursday, a high school game last night, and I have a couple of mariachi gigs this weekend (both outside). I also have some family members in the Houston area and
Bloggers Gone Wild!!! General by Joel Wagner - July 20, 2008July 1, 20102 I am on vacation from July 21st through July 30th! I'll be going to visit my parents, some friends, cruising Texas, and end up at the Texas Bandmasters Association convention. I'm conducting an experiment while I am out. I'm calling it Bloggers Gone Wild. I will not write a comment or post on the blog for the duration of my trip. I will read comments and posts on the blog from time to time. I will check my email periodically. I don't get it Of course you don't get it. There is more. I will create user accounts if you email me and ask for one. Once your account has been created, you will receive an email
On The Brink Of Quitting Inspiration by Joel Wagner - June 25, 2008July 1, 201010 Lisa writes: I googled "bitter about teaching" and came up with your blog. I was recently let go from a school I busted my a$$ in for a whole year (my first year) - constant criticism, cattiness, and pointing out and embellishing the negative things I had done while minimizing the positive (all the while they were telling me to stay positive!). She concludes her email: I just wanted to let you know that your blog picked me up a little bit. I still have a lot of healing to do, but I'm glad that I'm not the only person that this has happened to. What an awesome thing! In case you missed the story, here are a few articles
07-08: What Didn’t Work Well General by Joel Wagner - June 15, 2008July 1, 20105 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 negatives about this year: Lack of social life - While not entirely true, and things have changed for the positively since I began playing in a mariachi in April. But I still notice that I am far away from my family and many of my friends before I moved down here. Even after being in South Texas for four years, I find that my social life is limited to time spent with other band directors, and a small handful of church friends. Maybe that's
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
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
Less Stress: Only Work At Work Stress Reduction by Joel Wagner - October 29, 2007July 5, 20100 Each morning when I come into the band hall, there are always a handful of students who come to drop off their instruments before school. Often they will come in and stand around talking. Because our custodian runs the vacuum each day and doesn't fix the chairs after he finishes, the entire classroom has to be set up each day. I would prefer that they either practice their instruments or leave, but my coworker wants his students to come in and socialize or whatever. Since he gets to school later than I do, I have come up with a plan that works. I tell them to find something productive to do. That could be setting up chairs and stands, practicing,
But I Don’t Want To Teach! General by Joel Wagner - October 21, 2007July 5, 20103 Some people come by this site and blow it off because they don't ever have any dreams of sitting inside a classroom and teaching young hellions. That's fine. But these people fail to realize that we all are teachers in one sense of the word or another. The problem is that many people don't see this and end up blowing it when it comes their chance to actually teach something. Maybe we teach a child how to tie her shoe. Maybe we teach a friend how to play a new guitar chord. Maybe we teach our coworker the unwritten rules of the workplace. Maybe we teach our parents how to use electronics. Whatever the case, everyone is a teacher of
Less Stress: Reduce Phone Calls Stress Reduction by Joel Wagner - October 17, 2007May 29, 20163 I got an email from one of our secretaries yesterday asking me to call one of the other administrative assistants. The message left no indication of why I should call her. I have not yet called her and I don't intend to do so. I have a problem with phone calls. In a world where email has become a standard of communication at work, phone calls are a mere inconvenience Phone calls pose as important interruptions Often they are unimportant or at the very least delayable. At the worst, they are totally unimportant. Phone calls allow someone else to control our environment. I don't answer the phone during class I made the decision my third year of teaching to never stop to answer the phone
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 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
Help Me Change The World! Seriously General by Joel Wagner - August 8, 2007July 5, 20101 On July 4th, author Timothy Ferriss wrote a blog entry about changing the world. In response to his request for ideas, I wrote: As a teacher, your book has revolutionized the way I intend on teaching next year. I am going to start the year checking emails once a day and then gradually decrease that to two days a week. It’s amazing how much time most teachers waste with mundane and unimportant tasks. Your points on the difference between efficient and effective have really changed my paradigm of work. I wrote a blog article about it. I would definitely send at least a small chunk of the books to leaders in the National Science Teachers Association. Science teachers talkto other
Habit 4: Personal Habits Personal by Joel Wagner - July 12, 2007July 5, 20109 This is the fourth in a series of articles entitled 5 Habits of Highly Effective Teachers. What are some of the personal habits that are important to me? Personal Procedures What are some of the personal habits that are important to me? As I'm sitting here in the middle of the summer writing this, I realize that some of my structure has left my life. I stay up too late, and I wake up too late. I take longer than normal getting ready in the morning, and I sit and read a lot more now than I do during the school year. But disregarding that, here are some of the things that are important to me to keep my sanity
Habit 1: Communication Habits Stress Reduction by Joel Wagner - July 9, 2007May 29, 20163 This is the first in a series of articles entitled 5 Habits of Highly Effective Teachers. Communication Procedures Without question, one of the most essential elements of any good relationship is clear and open communication. As a teacher, practically everything that we do in the classroom is communication in one sense or another. With this in mind, it becomes evident why communication procedures are the most important skills for us to develop. I have previously written regarding some positive ways to communicate with others. This article is well worth the reading. However this time, we'll look at some procedures that can be set up that will facilitate greater communication. The first step to more effective communication is to eliminate unnecessary informational inputs from your life.