How To Actually Enjoy Teaching A Class You Don’t Want To Teach General by Joel Wagner - June 23, 2016June 23, 20160 You want me to teach what? Imagine my surprise the first day of my job one year when I found out that I was teaching Music History and that there was no curriculum for the class, no budget for it, and no textbook. The class was used to fulfill the fine arts credit that student needed to graduate, so I could reasonably expect that less than 25% of the students had any kind of working knowledge of music. In fact, most of them would inevitably want to listen to exclusively hip hop music and complain about anything that was produced more than 5 years earlier. Other teachers who had taught the class explained to me that they just show movies, or spend a semester teaching music theory and then a
Common New Teacher Struggles (And How To Deal With Them) New Teachers by Zoe Anderson - June 22, 2016August 5, 20161 Being a teacher is one of the most stressful jobs a person can have, and if you’re a teacher, you will know that one of the most stressful periods during the job occurs in the first year. Being a new teacher means that you will have to face the struggles and difficulties that all new jobs have, as well as having to deal with the high stakes of education; it’s a lot to take on. In this article, you will find the common new teacher struggles that every new teacher has to face, as well as the solutions to make that first year a little easier. Curricular guidance We have all experienced the first day on a new job where we are sat down
How I Fell In Love With Lesson Planning Music Education by Joel Wagner - June 20, 2016June 20, 20160 "I got your lesson plans right here, buddy!" You know the drill, spend hours creating a lesson plan weeks ahead of the class that you don't even stick to because the students fell behind last week  and now you're playing catch up trying to make magic happen. I know. Or an administrator drops by expecting to see your lesson plan binder at the front of the classroom or the state-mandated objectives listen on the board, or whatever new wild scheme the wind has blown in this year. Or maybe I'm the only one who has spent one industrious teacher work day in April writing lesson plans for the entire year because I didn't do them. Or simply turned in an empty lesson plan binder at the end of another school year.
Should Teachers Provide Great Customer Service? Classroom Management by Joel Wagner - June 16, 2016June 19, 20160 This is an updated version of one of the first articles written on this blog about treating education as a part of the customer service industry. The article was originally posted on February 24, 2007. It was edited and updated on June 15, 2016 to reflect a maturation in my approach to teaching as well as writing. You can read the original along with a handful of comments here. In the beginning When I was in college, I was assigned for one of my classes to write out own philosophy of education. It was somewhat noble (“I teach children to be better people through music†or something like that). It was substantially trite. Most importantly, it lacked any passion and it lacked depth. After all, I had not
A Step-By-Step Framework for Incremental Growth Inspiration by Joel Wagner - June 14, 2016June 14, 20162 I want you to watch the first 3:40 of this TED Talk by Benjamin Zander Notice the Dramatic change in the piano player from 7 years old to 11 years. Huge difference. But from 8 to 10, there is seemingly no change. What's happening is incremental change. Each year, the child improves dramatically, but it is not always evident, until BAM, it all seems to fall into place. Michael Hyatt writes about The Power of Incremental Change Over Time on his blog: I am not opposed to massive action. I have used it myself to achieve certain results. But it causes most people give up before they ever start. They just don’t think they can make the investment...What these people don’t realize is that they could
5 Keys To Educating People – Revisited Inspiration by Joel Wagner - June 9, 2016June 15, 20160 This is an updated version of the first article written on this blog, which was originally posted on February 11, 2007. It was edited and updated on June 9, 2016 to reflect a maturation in my approach to teaching as well as writing. You can read the original along with a handful of comments here. 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 was not, mind you, because I was giving them wrong information. It was, however, because I had placed my priorities in the wrong order. When we have the proper perspective, we end up teaching far more than
60 Very Practical Things I Wish I’d Known Before I Started Teaching General by Joel Wagner - June 7, 2016June 15, 20162 While I've had my ups and downs over the years as a teacher, my first two years were extremely challenging. Many of these pitfalls were avoidable. If I were going into a middle school band class as a first year teacher today, knowing what I know now, I would approach things differently. Here is an unsorted list that I have brainstormed of things I would like to have known before the first day of school. Begin class on time, every time Even though attendance is computerized, come up with a simple written system of checking role and do it consistently Run through each class period in your mind and take notes of questions you have; address those before the first day The more procedures
5 Steps That Took Me From “I Hate Teaching” To “I Love Teaching” New Teachers by Joel Wagner - June 5, 2016June 15, 20160 See if you can relate "I regret choosing this profession! I wish I was still back in college! I just want to go live at home and never have to work again! Oh wait, teaching provides insurance benefits, so I guess I'll just stick it out." Ever been there? It doesn't have to be that way. This can all change TODAY. It did for me. Here's how. An introduction Without a question, one of the top search results that sends people to my blog is "I Hate Teaching." It was #2 over the past 12 months. #1 was "Classroom Management Skills", which is essentially "Help! Want To Love Teaching, But I Hate Teaching." So, since I actually do not hate teaching at this point, I used to. For this reason, and
Just A Little Bit: 29 Tweaks That Help Me Gain The Respect of My Students Classroom Management by Joel Wagner - May 30, 2016July 31, 20163 Why don't my students respect me? We've all been there at one time or another. For me, it was nearly every day during my first two years . Since then, I have grown as a teacher, but even as I look back on what I wrote in this blog eight years ago, I am struck by how differently I have come to view things. Those early years of struggle were good, and Lord knows I still continue to find my share of struggles, but as far as student respect, I generally find that I have a much easier time than I did once upon a time. Here is a quick list of things that work to help me gain respect from my students. They may not work for
5 Reasons I Loved Teaching Middle School General by Joel Wagner - February 9, 2014July 3, 20161 This past summer was a whirlwind tour for me and someday I may share a bit about the amazing experiences I had traveling by myself across the country (including three nights stranded in airports, a fourth of July parade in a small town outside of Boston, following my beloved Texas Rangers to Saint Louis, New York, and Baltimore, a ride to the airport from Shelly Terrell, and an amazing time in some of this country's finest cities). But now is not the time for this. Now is the time to address the biggest change in my educational life. After 11 years of fighting in the trenches, I have finally moved on to the major leagues. I moved on from my previous
Top 10 Ways To Improvise Your Way to Being A Better Teacher General by Joel Wagner - June 24, 2013June 8, 20162 This summer I made the decision to go on a somewhat extensive tour of a few of the major cities in the Northeast United States. During the process, I reconnected with my friend Nelson, with whom I marched drumcorps 17 years ago. I haven't seen him in the intervening years and so it as been great to catch up with him the past few days. It turns out that he has spent the last few years doing comedy in and around the Chicago area. We went to The Second City Comedy Club last night and watched a completely improvised musical about a Golden Fleece. We have talked extensively at meals over the last few days as well. Some of our conversations
From Burnout Into Ignited Passion: How Blogging, Information Overload, and Running Made Me A Better Teacher Inspiration by Joel Wagner - May 28, 2013July 6, 20161 I don't care if it's your teaching job or your personal habits or your social life or what it is, we all face burnout at one time or another. Or another or another or another. At times, I can feel like we are in a dark tunnel with no escape and we don't have the energy to escape. Ummm, not that I have ever experienced that, of course. ANYWAY, you may or may not be struggling with this now. I would guess at this point in the school year, none of us in the United States are wanting to ever teach another school year. It happens. So I present to you an autobiographical short story that addresses this concept. Once upon a
Work from Anywhere, And Touch Other Lives by Teaching English Online General by Aileen Pablo - September 29, 2012August 2, 20160 People get into teaching for a variety of reasons, but two of the biggest are the ability it gives you to personally connect with students and continue learning and growing yourself. At first glance, becoming an online ESL teacher might seem like an odd way to do this. How can you connect with people when you’re not even in the same room? Are you really going to learn anything new when you’re teaching your native language? But people who think this way don’t understand how online teaching works. Unlike 15 or even 10 years ago, lessons aren’t conducted just using email and written tests, or even recorded video where you lecture students using a static script and lesson plan. Online English language
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
10 Years of Teaching: How Do I Keep My School Administration Happy? General by Joel Wagner - June 12, 2012July 1, 20160 Five years ago, I wrote a series of seven articles called “Questions That Will Save Your Career†that still remain among the most visited articles on this site. When I wrote those, I had successfully completed my 5th year in education. This summer, after 10 years, I am revisiting some of these older concepts. Today, I revisit How Do I Keep My School Administration Happy? How Do I Keep My Students Quiet? How Do I Keep My Students Engaged? How Do I Keep My Students Interested? How Do I Keep My Students Learning? How Do I Keep My Students Away From Me? How Do I Keep My School Administration Happy? How Do I Keep My Sanity? 10 Years of Teaching: