Check-In: How Was Your First Week? General by Joel Wagner - August 28, 20104 So this week that just passed was my first week of the new school year. It was pretty much amazing. I have a new completely positive approach. I am a brand new Joel this year. There are two things that are paramount in my mind as I stand in front of the class every day. I want the band to have:A culture of encouragementAn expectation of excellenceIf I can model those two things, I am convinced that I can ensure the rest of the students follow suit. We don't criticize other students, we encourage them. We don't laugh at mistakes, we learn from them. We don't point out problems, we provide possible solutions. As I've said before, when things settle
Graduate First – Why I Won’t Add You As My Facebook Friend Yet Blogging & Technology by Joel Wagner - September 20, 2009June 7, 201214 This weekend, I read Back to School: Tips for Teachers on Facebook on the Facebook blog. In it, the author writes:Some teachers stay away from Facebook altogether, while others -- like some of my friends -- have found creative workarounds such as only accepting friend requests from students who've graduated or those who are over the age of 18. However, it doesn't have to be that difficult. In fact, it is useful and rewarding to connect with your students on Facebook. So, in honor of all the people who are heading back to school this month, here are some tips for using Facebook.The article continues by outlining some things that we as teachers can do to secure the privacy of
My Education Background Classroom Management by Joel Wagner - September 22, 2007July 5, 20100 A long time ago, I was tagged by Miss A. I have some free time this morning as I get ready to go out of town with the HS band, so I thought I'd get around to this thing here... Is School 2.0 about technology or pedagogy (teaching methods)? Though I am not terribly familiar with the concept of School 2.0, it looks to be primarily about technology. Of course, I am not a big fan of new "teaching methods" and so anything that purports to be a new "teaching method" automatically raises a red flag for me. What were 1-3 things you had to”unlearn” to become an effective teacher? Wow, great question here. Don't try to
Organization Leads To Sanity Stress Reduction by Joel Wagner - June 14, 2007July 5, 20102 After a conversation with another teacher last night, I started looking through the archives. I realized that I have written a few times about having a clean desk and a clean desktop on my computer, but I have never really given a step-by-step guide of how I got there and some of the things I do to maintain that. If you are not yet familiar with David Allen's Getting Things Done philosophy, it is a book that covers many personal productivity issues. I have not yet read it, but have read numerous blog posts about it. The most thorough I've seen so far is here at the GTD FAQ from Zen Habits. If you have never heard anything about the
5 Keys To Educating People Inspiration by Joel Wagner - February 11, 2007July 25, 20164 A Matter of Priorities During my first two years of teaching, I discovered that I had a whole lot of information, but the students just weren't listening to me or learning from me. It is not, mind you, because I was giving them wrong information. It was, however, because I had placed the priorities in the wrong order. When we have the proper perspective, we will end up teaching far more than we ever imagined we might teach. When I first got into the business of education, my priority was to educate children. So my philosophy could be summarized as: Educate When we have the proper perspective, we will end up teaching far more than we ever imagined we might teach.Not bad, but