Where Have YOU Been? Personal by Joel Wagner - October 13, 20100 This school year is turning out to be pretty crazy in a lot of ways. I'm now in my ninth year of teaching and am working firsthand with a third year teacher on a regular basis teaching 6th grade beginner band. I also have the opportunity to work alongside a first year strings teacher, a second year choir teacher, and also in the same district as a first year band director. So my hands have been pretty full trying to fill the role of mentor in some ways with these folks.In addition, my efforts at running have slowed down substantially as I got a stress fracture on my foot in July, continued trying to run despite the pain (and reduced
Do I Really Want To Teach? Reader Appreciation by Joel Wagner - March 31, 2008July 2, 20106 I found this article that I wrote back in November but never got around to posting on the blog. Do I really want to teach? In my first two years of teaching, not a week went by when I didn't ask myself that very question. Many people face it every day. Without question, the most popular search terms that brings visitors to my blog are "quit teaching" and "do I want to teach?" I wonder how many Google searches are done each day on the subject. I wonder how many young teachers decide each day that this will be their last semester to teach. It's tragic, really. At the same time, the greater tragedy is the number of people who