The Busyness of Teaching New Teachers by Joel Wagner - January 7, 2009June 30, 20103 I love the week following Christmas break. The students (and teachers) have accustomed themselves to staying up late. Many of them woke up Monday morning earlier than they went to sleep Friday night/Saturday morning. As a result, Monday and Tuesday were sleep-deprived transition days. Classroom management was much simpler on those days than many days so far this year. I can't help but think of those poor student teachers who have started waking up before 10am for the first time in years. With college class schedules having 15 minute breaks built in on busy days and three or four hour gaps of relaxation time on the standard days, how are they handling the workload of a real 8-hour day? What
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
Weekend Wrapup 08/20/07 Blogging & Technology by Joel Wagner - August 20, 2007July 5, 20102 Happy Monday morning. I begin staff development this week. School begins in Texas next Monday. This spring, I began to make myself familiar with the Getting Things Done (GTD) approach to personal productivity. My views on effectiveness went into overdrive this summer as I read The 4-Hour Workweek. Timothy Ferriss has recently posted The Not-To-Do List, 9 things to make you more productive. Just a Substitute Teacher points us to an article in USA Today that has a great list of things that some school districts or schools do to get more subs. Check out How to Lure Substitute Teachers. Athena gives us a list called 10 Things I Learned In My First Year of Teaching. How many of us