Exploring EduBlogs Blogging & Technology by Joel Wagner - September 30, 2008July 1, 20107 As my series of 10 Things I Wish I Knew As A First Year Teacher comes to a close, I want to point out that the world has changed dramatically over the last 7 years since I began teaching. As an educator, the primary advantage in the tremendous growth of the Internet would be the incredible EduBlogs that have sprung up. As someone who is quite technologically sophisticated, the presence of this many blogs would have been tremendously helpful for me back then. The problem is that most of the people out there aren't quite as technologically saavy as I am. So what is an aspiring young educator to do? I've been thinking about this quite a bit. Honestly, there
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
The Single Most Important Advice Anyone Can Give To A First Year Teacher Classroom Management by Joel Wagner - September 21, 2008July 1, 20109 When I first started out teaching, I desperately wanted the kids to like me. To this end, I ended up letting my classes get out of control. A handful of things contributed to this: Concerning myself with every matter that was brought to my attention Allowing kids to mesbehave Trying to get the kids to like me Yelling at kids Arguing with them So I learned how to get control. If this sounds like something you might have trouble with, I encourage you to check out these articles in this order: You Better Smile Before Christmas! How Do I Keep My Students Quiet? Arguing Is Normal, isn't It? 5 Surefire Tips For Handling Misbehavior Make Love
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
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
Catching Up Blogging & Technology by Joel Wagner - March 8, 2008July 2, 20100 I have had quite a few sites link to me lately and I have not returned the favor. If you have linked to me at any point, please trust that I will be linking to you within the next three months. I'm telling you, this site will go crazy after the school year is over. I may be able to do some more catching up over spring break in a week or so. We'll see what happens. Joseph Pisano has posted the latest Official List Of The ME Bloggers. jd2718 added me to his March link updates. He also said I'm a great idea and very helpful. Awww, thanks! Wow, where has the time gone? I've been featured in a
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
New Horizons Looming…Feedback Requested Personal by Joel Wagner - January 28, 2008July 2, 20106 I will begin setting up and writing in a Music Education blog soon. The idea was to include Music Education content on this blog, but I think that might alienate a handful of the readers and that is the last thing I want to do. So when it gets up and running, I will link to there from here and link from here to there. It's exciting! When that happens, the posting frequency over here may dip a little bit, but I will continue to add great content regularly. I have noticed a change in my posting habits lately as well. It seems that I have begun to find myself on a mission to create more edubloggers. I love what
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
The Overlooked Articles of 2007 Blogging & Technology by Joel Wagner - December 27, 2007July 2, 20100 In continuing my review of the year, I am looking today at some of the articles that I wish were more popular. They may have received a handful of comments, or they may not have received any. The most common cause for their relative obscurity is that they are older articles and have gotten lost. Even so, many of them haven't received a whole lot of traffic. So I'm dusting them off, polishing them up, and repackaging them here. A dozen overlooked articles of 2007 A Customer Service Oriented Classroom Experience February 24th, 2007 Be The Best Teacher In The World May 19th, 2007 Reading May 29th, 2007 Finding Excellent Educators To Emulate June 5th, 2007 Where Have All
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,
Less Stress: Deepen Your Relationships With Coworkers Stress Reduction by Joel Wagner - October 25, 2007July 5, 20100 I touched on this topic before in Deepen Your Relationships With Friends, but I want to get even more involved here. I want to look at specific ways that you can collaborate with coworkers. More experienced teachers These people are the lifeblood of education. We've all had at least a small handful of teachers who we had in school whom everyone KNEW were older than the school building, but was afraid to say it. We all know the type. But they truly love teaching. They can imagine nothing else they would do with their lives! These are the people you need to hook up with. Not only can they be unvaluable sources of free information, but they also generally thrive
Less Stress: Deepen Your Relationships With Students Stress Reduction by Joel Wagner - October 24, 2007June 13, 20122 Wow. I love my students. I am amazed that I haven't written more on my blog about this fact. As I search through my blog, I have come to the realization that I probably come across as some heartless disciplinarian who expects nothing more from his students than that they be quiet all the time. This is about as far from the truth as you can get. In fact, I love my students very much. I came to the determination three years ago that classroom management was a key element of demonstrating my love to them. You see, when we allow them to waste their education, we are showing unconcern for them rather than courtesy. One of my key scriptures as
Reader Feedback Blogging & Technology by Joel Wagner - September 11, 2007July 5, 20104 I spent Saturday morning playing catchup with a lot of work that I had allowed to pile up. One of the things I did was to move the graphic I received from Eric up to the top of my sidebar. I also added some new graphics and removed some information If you haven't looked at the main page on my blog, click on this post in your reader, click on Home at the top of my blog, and leave me some feedback about the graphics and stuff I added. I know that I have a handful of readers who frequently leave comments on here. You guys are awesome! I also know that I have a small army of readers who
Anxiety Sets In As The New School Year Looms Ominously Close General by Joel Wagner - August 11, 2007June 25, 20160 The new school year is two weeks and two days away. This time last year, our week of inservices was well under way. Thanks to the Texas legislature, we will not begin staff development until August 20th and are not allowed to begin school before August 27th. That's fine with me, but I am ready to begin the school year. We started our middle school band camp this past Monday and it is so much fun there. As I've mentioned before, these are students that I taught in 6th grade. I am moving from the sixth grade campus to the 7th & 8th grade campus this year. It's so much fun for me to see all of these kids whom I