Top 10 Ways To Improvise Your Way to Being A Better Teacher General by Joel Wagner - June 24, 2013June 8, 20162 This summer I made the decision to go on a somewhat extensive tour of a few of the major cities in the Northeast United States. During the process, I reconnected with my friend Nelson, with whom I marched drumcorps 17 years ago. I haven't seen him in the intervening years and so it as been great to catch up with him the past few days. It turns out that he has spent the last few years doing comedy in and around the Chicago area. We went to The Second City Comedy Club last night and watched a completely improvised musical about a Golden Fleece. We have talked extensively at meals over the last few days as well. Some of our conversations
Make Learning Fun: Pacing Your Classes, Teaching Lines and Spaces [AUDIO] Music Education by Joel Wagner - November 17, 2010November 17, 20101 Ramona's comment inspired me to write 15 Tricks To Transform Yourself From Classroom Bully Into A Favorite Teacher a few days ago. Yesterday, it inspired Joey to leave a comment. The excerpt that jumped out at me was this: In response to Ramona’s post, I see 680 students some twice a week, some once every other week each as a class (30-35 students.) I found the best thing to do is to have generalized rules and consequences posted up and always refer to the posters. If I notice the class is coming in wild I start by reviewing them. I have what we should do posted up, and in my time out spot, I have the consequences. I found most
3 Reasons For Moms To Become Teachers General by Anna Miller - June 30, 2010June 30, 20106 This guest post is contributed by Anna Miller, who writes on the topic of online degrees . She welcomes your comments at her email id: anna.miller009@gmail.com It’s a job like no other because it involves both change and routine – you follow a similar routine every day and year after year, but you also see change in the form of different students and a new class every year. It may not be the highest paying job, but teaching at a school is probably one of the best options for most people because it not only allows you to grow as an individual, it also brings you a great deal of satisfaction because you know you’re making a significant difference in
Running and Reading Inspiration by Joel Wagner - January 9, 2010June 30, 20101 Since I have decided this new year to slowly end my hatred of running that I have harbored for the past decade or so, I'm reading more about it. I am inspired to find there are a handful of pretty good health and fitness blogs that my school hasn't blocked on the network yet too! My conference period can now be spent walking, reading, or actually doing productive things for my band! Today I have been catching up on some of the Twitter links I've seen and came across 13 Most Inspirational YouTube Videos of All-Time that Angela Maiers had sent out a few days back. I was really impressed by this video. I was so impressed that I
The Blog Revolution: Day 3 – Keep ’em Coming Back Blogging & Technology by Joel Wagner - May 7, 2008July 2, 20102 As we continue the Blog Revolution Project, we come to day three of our focus on writing. Today will look at one of the best ways to keep readers coming back each day. It also happens to be one of the best ways to bring in traffic much further down the road. We'll focus on the art of the series. Just as we looked at how writing lists can be very popular on Monday, another great way to encourage traffic to return is to write lists, but extend them over a period of a few days or even a few weeks. Essentially writing lists of articles, or a series. Some of the pivotal points in this blog's history have revolved
Double Your FeedBurner RSS Numbers Overnight General by Joel Wagner - January 27, 2008May 29, 201612 This article is part of a Group Writing Project about Building RSS Numbers. I recently achieved the milestone of having 150 subscribers (I'm still hanging out in that area). In reaching that, I realize that many bloggers use Blogger to host their blogs and FeedBurner for their RSS syndication. That's a good combination (I much prefer WordPress, but Blogger can be simpler to set up). This post will serve as a simple tutorial to allow people in this situation to double their subscriber count overnight. If not overnight, then quickly to say the least. I've noticed that a lot of the bloggers who have this setup seem to have low subscriber counts. I noticed that Learn Me Good is still hanging out around
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
How To Cope With Tragedy General by Joel Wagner - August 22, 2007July 5, 20100 Last week, Michelle wrote that she learned that one of her colleagues recently passed away. She writes a popular blog on blogging and was wondering if she should take some time away or just how to handle her desires to grow as a writer, generate income with the blog, and also just get a chance to deal with the emotional heaviness of the situation. Last November, I went to the first funeral of a former student of mine. She was a high school tuba player in the two years that I knew her. She graduated in 2004. She lived down the street from me. She washed my car for a quarter once. We traded movies during the summer, and
Reading Personal by Joel Wagner - May 29, 2007July 5, 20100 I moved to my new office today and brought a few books. The other band director I'll be working with said, "Wow, you sure have a lot of books." I told him that I read quite a bit. He said that he doesn't read, and we just kind of laughed about it. But then I got to thinking... I am consistently amazed at how many intelligent people just simply do not find time to read. I am not the most prolific reader around or anything, but I do find time every few days or so to read a chapter or so out of a book. Reading is one of the most valuable skills that we have. Sure people can