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: Reduce Phone Calls Stress Reduction by Joel Wagner - October 17, 2007May 29, 20163 I got an email from one of our secretaries yesterday asking me to call one of the other administrative assistants. The message left no indication of why I should call her. I have not yet called her and I don't intend to do so. I have a problem with phone calls. In a world where email has become a standard of communication at work, phone calls are a mere inconvenience Phone calls pose as important interruptions Often they are unimportant or at the very least delayable. At the worst, they are totally unimportant. Phone calls allow someone else to control our environment. I don't answer the phone during class I made the decision my third year of teaching to never stop to answer the phone
Less Stress: Declutter Your Inbox Stress Reduction by Joel Wagner - October 10, 2007July 5, 20100 We now have our Desk and Desktop under control. But how do we keep them under control? Better yet, how do we keep from having too much stuff coming into our lives that we allow to become clutter? Email Inbox Something that many teachers can't seem to figure out is how to archive their old emails. Instead, they just leave them all in the inbox. I was at an inservice and the presenter apologized to one of the other teachers because she had been gone for a few days and overlooked the teacher's email because it got lost in the shuffle. She didn't get around to it until two weeks later. That's just plain inexcusable! So how do we avoid
Less Stress: Declutter Your Desktop Stress Reduction by Joel Wagner - October 9, 2007July 5, 20100 Yesterday, we began decluttering our desk. Today, we will declutter our desktop. One of the things that drives me crazy is when I install a new program and it leaves all sorts of icons on my desktop. It also drives me crazy when I have all sorts of popup notifications in my Windows taskbar telling me everything that I don't need to know. These are nonurgent situations presenting themselves as though they were urgent. It disrupts my life and it's something that I finally decided to put a stop to. I am not going to attempt to reinvent the wheel on this one. I have found some great articles that thoroughly go through processes for getting things organized. What
Less Stress: Declutter Your Desk Stress Reduction by Joel Wagner - October 8, 2007July 5, 20104 I have written about having a clear desk before in passing, but here is a little bit about why to do it as well as how to do it. This is a real picture of my half of the office at work. Imagine coming to work each morning and having a nice, calm, clear workspace. Do you think it would help jump start your work day? I know for me, I am able to get to work, sit down in my (clearly uncomfortable) chair, and relax. We've all read the sign atop a messy desk: "A Clean Desk Is The Sign of a Diseased Mind." That is an excuse given by people who don't want to bother with coming up
Less Stress: Kill Your TV Stress Reduction by Joel Wagner - October 5, 2007July 5, 20102 This is perhaps my most favorite tip of them all! I haven't regularly watched television since I was in 11th grade, but I have watched quite a bit of it. When I read "The 4-Hour Workweek," Timothy Ferriss suggests a low-information diet. His theory is that if you simply ask people "what's new in the world," you will find out about most news. He also points out that most news that comes across as events are unfolding is either incomplete or totally inaccurate. I tend to agree. So I have made the decision this year to completely unplug my television. I will actually get rid of it soon, I'm just not sure what I'm going to do with it. It'd
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
Less Stress: Eliminate Junk Food Stress Reduction by Joel Wagner - October 3, 2007July 5, 20100 Junk Food. We hear the term tossed around all the time. What is junk food? Basically, it's any food that lacks substantial nutritional value. White flour is a perfect example. They take something healthy (wheat flour), bleach it, and kill any nutrients that may have been there. Fried foods are another example. Soft drinks and desserts also have loads of sugar (or comparable unhealthy sugar substitutes) in them. I used to eat them all the time. Since this school year began, I stopped. If it's yellowish in color, it wouldn't be a bad idea to avoid it! Tomorrow, we'll look at how I have replaced the junk food. In addition to drinking almost nothing by water, the elimination of junk
Less Stress: Wake Up Earlier Stress Reduction by Joel Wagner - October 2, 2007July 5, 20100 I used to wake up every morning about an hour before I wanted to be at school. I try to get there by 7:20, so that meant waking up around 6:20. That resulted in an extremely rushed morning. Plus the traffic at my new school is way heavier than the traffic was at my old school. I literally have to leave my house at 7 to make it there by 7:20. And I live less than 3 miles away... So I have gotten into the habit of waking up around 5:30 or earlier most mornings. This lets me have some time to stretch and get my body moving some before getting in the shower and not being rushed. I am
Less Stress: Drink Water Stress Reduction by Joel Wagner - October 1, 2007July 5, 20103 I used to drink sodas all the time. I drank Dr. Pepper numerous times daily while I was in junior high and high school. I "became smart" and started drinking Diet Coke when I got to college. Still, daily. I cut out caffeine from my diet last August but continued drinking Diet Sprite every day. Then I learned how important water is to the people of the world. I learned that most Americans are chronically dehydrated. So I tried it out beginning last Spring Break. I began drinking virtually nothing but water. I have eliminated all carbonated drinks from my dietary intake, as well as most juice and other non-carbonated drinks. I feel better. I have also learned that there