What To Do When You Hate Teaching Why Teachers Quit by Joel Wagner - September 3, 2012August 4, 20166 Disillusionment is common to most of us involved in the teaching profession. We all deal with it at one point or another. But what do you do when you hate teaching? From dream to reality Here's the general path many of us take: You major in education because you want to change the world You realize that in order to teach, you need a find a job You go through disappointing interview after disappointing interview and are told if you had more experience, you would be perfect for the job You get frustrated that the only way to get experience is to get the job they won't give you because you don't have experience Some school district that was not your first
The Shift Personal by Joel Wagner - June 6, 2010June 30, 20102 The background It took me about three years. I heard rumblings of Twitter way back in the fall of 2006 when I was getting into blogs. "Who cares what you ate for lunch?" So I ignored it. I finally got on in the spring of 2008, but never really got around to doing too much with it until then. Evidently my first tweet was something about an enjoyable weekend. How fun. It was so much fun that I blogged about it. This all came less than two months after I reached a subscriber count of 150. I was excited. Fast forward Now even despite the incredible slowdown of RSS subscribers (and even RSS reading in general) due to Social Media,
Rule-Free Teaching General by Joel Wagner - September 4, 2009June 30, 20109 This year, we have done things quite a bit differently in our band classes. We have not spent any time really outlining classroom rules. In fact, we really have been operating on a rule-free teaching model. Earlier this week, I clarified my "don't talk to me" policy. Beyond that though, we really haven't gone over anything specifically. No lists of rules and consequences. No do this, don't do this. It's just been fairly smooth. Of course from time to time, we have to elaborate on a few points (restroom passes, phone usage, etc.) but those are more policy type things. In fact, we have normally spent an entire class day going over the Band Handbook and passing it out to
Find A Mirror (Total Teacher Transformation Day 2) Classroom Management by Joel Wagner - May 4, 2009June 30, 20102 This is an article in the Total Teacher Transformation series. Click here for a complete table of contents. Today's lesson is simple, and yet profound. One of the most difficult concepts for me to grasp was one of the most important in my early days of teaching. It is also the most transformational and pivotal of everything that we're going to be doing through this process. Every problem that happens in my classroom is my fault. Or stated more positively I am responsible to ensure good things happen in my class. If we can get over that hurdle, if we can get through that first barrier, we are on the downhill ride to becoming a great teacher. We are responsible for
Personal Questions Personal by Joel Wagner - January 18, 2009June 30, 20104 Calebteaches got me thinking about this today. How old are you? Do you have a girlfriend? Do you have a MySpace? I love working with middle school kids. When I was teaching 6th grade, I got a lot of these weird questions. Now that I'm working with 7th & 8th graders, I get less of them, but the rumors become more elaborate. A couple of weeks ago, one of my 7th graders asked me if I was going out with a band director at another school in our district. I told her no. But as I thought about it, I realized this is probably the best rumor that I've ever heard floating around about me. Much better than the typical
Teaching: Part Time Job At Full Pay Wages???? General by Joel Wagner - July 2, 2008July 1, 201035 I have been holding my tongue on this issue for over a month, but I thought I'd jump in and respond while I have time and am thinking about it. J Frap recently left a comment on my article 9 Reasons To Quit Teaching (And 10 Reasons To Stick) that got under my skin. You should also add “part time job at full pay wages”. Thats a huge benefit, how about you take one year off from teaching and work in the real world, where you would make less money, only receive one week paid vacation, you wouldn’t be given ‘planning days’ every other week, and you would have to work on most holidays. I think if teachers were forced
TAKS Day General by Joel Wagner - March 5, 2008July 2, 20105 We have our first of four TAKS test days today. They seem to have increased testing security quite a bit this year over last year. In fact, we are supposed to have some monitors from the state coming to our campus at some point during the day to make sure we are doing things correctly. I'm new at this campus, and things are run differently here than they were at the campus where I taught last year. We get to be with the students we are testing from before 8:00 to at least 2:00. We sit with the students in the cafeteria at lunch. We don't get a conference period. It's pretty much a wasted day as far as teaching
Not The Best Day Ever General by Joel Wagner - February 19, 2008July 2, 201010 Today was a pretty good day in parts. In fact, most of my classes went really well. Except for my percussion class. It has been bad since the middle of December. This is slightly abnormal for me, but the following post is a narrative with a question and plea for help at the end. Why is my percussion class getting out of hand? Because I have two different groups of students in there. Since the director I work with had a stroke, I have been the only band director at my school. This makes my work load heavier, but manageable for the most part. The percussion is the exception because it is a combination of percussionists from two different bands.
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
Less Stress: Deepen Your Relationships With Family Stress Reduction by Joel Wagner - October 22, 2007July 5, 20102 We now begin our fourth week of 25 Tips For Less Stress. I have thoroughly enjoyed writing these articles as they have helped me to really focus on some of the routines that I take for granted in my life. When I have been tempted to relax on some of them, I have reread my own writings and been once again inspired to stick it out. This week, we begin focusing on relationships. Today we'll begin with the most important relationships of all: family members. Family disagreements will carry over into every aspect of what we do in life. If you fight with your spouse in the morning before work, one way or another you will take it out on
Less Stress: Increase Healthy Foods Stress Reduction by Joel Wagner - October 4, 2007July 5, 20100 Now that you have eliminated junk foods from your diet, it's time to replace them. So what kinds of foods should you replace them with? Well, I guess it all depends on what your goals are. I personally try to eat as many fruits and vegetables as I can reasonably get into my body each day. This means that I eat a salad or two nearly every day. Either for lunch or dinner, I will get one. Just that one simple step really helps me out as far as my mindset goes. For me, I have debated the idea of eating "sugar free" foods, but I just don't want to. I eat fruits as desserts and they do a good
15 Tips To Stay Positive Inspiration by Joel Wagner - July 17, 2007July 5, 20106 I recently read an article entitled Is Positive Possible? by Samantha on TeacherLingo.com. In the article, she writes in part: Why are we so depressed? Why do we only feel needed and understood when we are griping together? I think about this a lot. It is as if we are all addicted to the frenzy, the wretched wreck of it all. "Who said this? Who is quitting? What are they making us do now?" If you say anything good-everyone looks at you like you've got to be kidding. My response to her was: Dave Ramsey says "If your broke friends are making fun of your financial plan, you're on the right track." Similarly, if your miserable colleagues are making fun
Is Education Really That Important? (Part 2) Inspiration by Joel Wagner - June 25, 2007July 5, 20103 After my first post this morning, I realized that I actually met a few high school dropouts yesterday. One was mentioned in the previous post. On the flip side were two other young ladies I had lunch with. These women were 22 and 29 years old. One finished 11th grade and the other was kicked out of school after assaulting a teacher and principal in 8th grade. Both of them met while living in a rehabilitation type home run by people from a local church. Admittedly, they grew up in the inner city, while the other young lady grew up in a South Texas Border Town. Environment was different from that standpoint. But demographically, they would all be listed the
06-07: What Didn’t Work Well General by Joel Wagner - June 3, 2007July 5, 20100 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 focusThis was my first year to be stationed at one campus all day long and have another band director working with me all day long. We also had the string orchestra director and choir orchestra director share the office with us in the morning or afternoon respectively. This made my morning routine very different from what I had established in the past because having them in there just changed the dynamics of the day. I usually like to spend the