The Vitality of Collaboration Music Education by Joel Wagner - May 30, 2007July 5, 20100 Most of the band staff went to lunch today. We spent about an hour and a half at a pizza buffet, mostly talking and not eating pizza. Collaboration is a good thing, if done correctly. Here are some key elements that I observe when I work with colleagues: Have fun Relax Focus on positives Don't spend all the time talking about work Don't spend much time talking about negative things Do spend time discussing teaching strategies that work for you Don't take yourself too seriously Learn something from everyone you can, even if you learn what not to do Planning is good. Planning as a group is one of the most effective ways to plan. No matter how
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
8 Methods For Recruiting People Into Your Program Music Education by Joel Wagner - April 21, 2007July 5, 20100 As a band director dealing with beginning band, a substantial part of my energy each year is spent on recruiting 5th graders to be in band next year. I have generally done a pretty good job getting kids enrolled in the program, but this year I began to look at it from a marketing standpoint. The results have been incredible. We still have some more recruiting to go, but we have already increased the enrollment by about 35 from what it was at this point last year, and it looks like it may very well be more than 60 more students next year than we have this year. That's huge. We still have some marketing left to do in the
4 Tip’s For Being Respected Personal by Joel Wagner - April 1, 2007July 5, 20104 An Alarming Trend One of the things that I have come to realize is that, by and large, educators have a poor grasp of grammar and spelling. Maybe this is isolated to the United States, but part of me fears that is not the case. Since nearly all of my adult life has been spent in educational circles, I have no first-hand knowledge of other fields. It amazes me how often I get emails from secretaries, teachers, and even administrators which contain a remarkably poor grasp of the English language. The sad part is that it's often not accidental. They reuse the same misspellings throughout the same email, or even repeat them in further correspondence. But The Problem Is