50 Things Every First Year Teacher Should Know New Teachers by Joel Wagner - September 2, 2012August 6, 20173 The first year teacher is often a very lonely and isolated person. They often feel like everyone else has everything already figured out, and they are the only one struggling. That is not the case. In fact, so many of us are in survival mode and dealing with our own issues that we forget to help the first year teachers out. Below is a list of 50 things I picked up in my first 10 years of teaching that can hopefully help you through some of those lonely times. I am in my 11th year of teaching now. Where did the time go? One of the top search results that sends people to this blog is "First Year Teacher" so I thought that
5 Tips To Putting The Pieces of Your Life Back Together General by Joel Wagner - April 15, 2008July 2, 20104 I recently took my band to the UIL Concert & Sight Reading competition. We worked hard on the music. We worked hard in after school sectionals. We worked hard on passing classes to retain eligibility. The end result was that the band got first division in the Concert portion of the contest, and first division in the Sight Reading portion. That combination is called Sweepstakes. Putting together a performance like this takes its toll on everyone involved. As a result, I have fallen behind on a number of things in my personal life. The most notable is my housekeeping.Since I conduct the second band, it is made up of mostly 7th graders. This was their first year to go to
8 Ways Blogging Makes Me A Better Teacher General by Joel Wagner - January 14, 2008July 2, 20109 I have found this year that I have been making a lot of progress on my own personal teaching style. It's my 6th year to teach, and I begin what could be seen as the downhill slope of teaching. Now that I am pretty adequate at getting children to be and stay quiet throughout class so that I can teach them, I run the risk of slacking off and stagnating in my teaching technique. The whole if it's not broke, don't fix it mentality could very easily take over. But that's not the case with me. Why not? I believe that a lot of it has to do with my own personality of one who pursues excellence. But I think
Highlighting Some Recent Comments General by Joel Wagner - January 7, 2008July 2, 20101 I have fallen behind on the blog lately, but that is because I am actually trying to move forward some more in my personal life. Sometimes sacrifices are necessary parts of progress. I wanted to take this opportunity to highlight a few of the great comments that I have received lately. I am interested in hearing more about how some of you run your classrooms effectively. This can include specific teaching techniques, classroom management (which we have gone over quite a bit in recent months), and socially. I also am interested in hearing how you handle administrative issues that seem to pop up from time to time. Out of the middle of nowhere, Jane wrote a lengthy and thoughtful comment
Reader Appreciation: Pamela Reader Appreciation by Pamela - November 23, 2007May 29, 20160 November is Reader Appreciation Month at So You Want To Teach? Today's featured reader is Pamela. Name: Pamela Location: Michigan Occupation: Elementary Teacher, Reading Specialist Blog: Blog may be coming soon, but none yet ;-) Tell me some of your favorite things about your job Some of my favorite things about teaching: I enjoy sharing my love of learning and my passion for certain topics. It goes beyond just teaching the material...it's about making a personal connection with the students. Along those same lines, I love sharing the excitement of a good book. When I introduce it and starting talking about it with excitement, the students can't wait for me to start reading. When it's time to stop reading and begin our next lesson, they beg
Personal Update Personal by Joel Wagner - September 23, 2007July 5, 20102 No weekend wrapup last week. No weekend wrapup this week either. I'm sorry. I am being overwhelmed by work commitments as well as personal commitments. On a personal note, I preached in church last Wednesday and will preach again this Wednesday. That takes a lot of focus and study time, which really seems to make this blog suffer a bit. In addition, there are just a whole lot of things on my plate right now in the personal life. I'm doing fine, but I just need to take a little bit of time off from posting on here. Don't worry, much more good stuff will be coming back again in November and beyond. This is definitely turning out to be