June 2020 – A Mindful Approach to Music Education

Summertime, and the Livin’ is Anything But Easy Right Now. What are YOU doing to make sure you’ve got the stamina to make it through a school year like no other next year?

You’ve spent the last three months learning all kinds of new ways to deliver instruction and teach in a distance learning environment, despite never having experienced this as a learner or having been trained how to deliver all your content in new ways – and you made these changes overnight.

While you somehow got through the most surreal educational (and life) experience, you may be looking back at what you’ve learned and now have more questions than answers as we move forward.

Now that school has ended for this year and you’ve had a moment to take a breath, you may be wondering, “What in the hell am I going to do next year?”

How am I going to teach? Will I even have a job? How do I deliver content and realistically meet all the guidelines and expectations without spending 10 hours a day this summer rewriting my curriculum and planning for multiple types of teaching platforms and situations? How can I balance my family and professional lives when I don’t even know how classes will be structured? I’ve never been trained for distance teaching, and I’m not sure how to adapt my performance-based classes… there’s so much to worry about!

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As educators, we tend to be organized with plans for every contingency that could come up. But in a pandemic and during a time when there’s so much anxiety about what school will look like in the fall, the time we normally take during the summer to relax and recharge can easily be hijacked by stress and fear of how to teach and support your own family in a sustainable way.

Are you going to spend all summer worrying about next year or would you rather spend it making sure you’re ready to face whatever comes at you without the stress, anxiety, and exhaustion taking over?

It’s possible to use the next few weeks as a time to rebuild your own toolbox with skills you can use to keep yourself in the best mental and physical space possible so you have the stamina to do this important work.

Don’t waste all summer trying to figure out where to start. Jump to the front of the line by figuring out how to recharge by identifying your own current mental and physical health status so you can determine what you can do to take care of your own needs so you can support your students, family, and yourself in the upcoming year.

Where do you even start when it comes to figuring out what is creating the most stress for you so you can begin to figure out how to address it?

I’ve designed an assessment to help you do just that!

Check out Moffat’s Mojo Meter for Educators. This quiz will help you identify the very things that are keeping you from being able to truly relax and recharge this summer.

I hope you find the few minutes you invest in taking this assessment to be helpful in identifying what you need to do for yourself in order to support everyone else through this journey.

Peace-
Lesley

Is This the Summer You Finally Figure Out Your Work/Life Balance So You Can Survive Next Year or Are You Going to Wing It?

The challenge of not knowing what to prepare for when school starts in the fall is stressful. Stress contributes to all kinds of health problems, both physically and mentally. I know this from first-hand experience.

Are you prepared for whatever comes your way or are you already envisioning the 14-hour work days that involve Plans A, B, C, D and more? Will you have the energy for your own family while teaching in person and/or remotely while also monitoring students’ health and safety?

How will you keep yourself mentally and physically fit so that you can handle all of your responsibilities at school and at home without collapsing?

If you aren’t sure if you’re prepared for the challenges of having a healthy work/life balance come September, check out my Music Teacher Mojo Meter. This quick self assessment lets you get a snapshot of your readiness for teaching during a pandemic.

By asking yourself these questions, you can easily identify where your strengths have been and what your biggest obstacles will be moving forward. You can’t fix what you can’t identify.

Music Teacher Mojo Meter

Summer is the perfect time to invest in YOU – and this summer is the most important summer to put habits in place that will support you in the upcoming school year. We’ve got important work to do – and we must have the stamina to be able to do it!

I hope my Music Teacher Mojo Meter is a helpful tool in helping you figure out what you can do to support yourself through this stressful time.

With you on this journey –
Lesley

Summer Book Basket of FREE Resources for Educators

As we wrap up the most unusual school year in the history of the world, there are a million things to think about and do as we prepare for next year. Not knowing what to expect and where to start can feel overwhelming. We can either freak out or figure it out.

As we have seen over the past few months, much of the work we do as teachers goes way beyond teaching content. We are shaping the hearts and minds of our students, too. We are walking with them on a journey for a more equitable world at the same time, and it takes a lot to do this.

This is hard work – and it is critical work.

A few of my author friends who have written books specifically for educators have offered FREE downloads of their eBooks to my friends and colleagues in an effort to provide help for you during this challenging experience. I’m delighted to be able to pass these resources on to you. Feel free to share them with fellow educators as well.

I invite you to download any or all of these awesome resources. Just click the links below to immediately access their books. And if you want to know more about any of these authors’ books, techniques, or ideas as they relate to your particular situation, feel free to reach out to them. They are real people who are on a mission to make the world a better place with their stories.

I have been a teacher for over 30 years. As much as I’d like to say I have this all figured out, I don’t. I have more work to do. I have much more to learn. And it all starts by educating ourselves and using resources that support us in our missions to help kids learn and grow.

THANK YOU for your tireless service to students and education. Together we are going to change the world.

May the summer bring you an opportunity to take a breath, reset, and focus your energy in a way that supports you so you can support yourself, your family, your students, and your community.

With you on this journey
Lesley

Dr. Tonya Crombie is the Amazon best-selling author of Stop Worrying About your Anxious Child and is a certified life coach who likes nothing better than helping parents manage their children’s and their own anxiety. Tonya has an MBA and a doctorate in Industrial/Organizational psychology. She founded her coaching practice after leaving a successful corporate career to have more time with her family. She lives just outside of New Orleans, LA with her awesome husband, two amazing kids – including a beautifully perfect anxious child -and two extremely barky dogs.

Dr. Tonya Crombine

Most high school seniors don’t leave high school with the tools they need to prevent the likelihood of sexual assault. These are often learned over time, hopefully without any damaging experiences along the way. Even now when sexual assault rates have reached epidemic proportions, and half of all victims are between the ages of 18 and 34, we still have very few resources to offer young people around sexual safety. Be Strong, Be Wise in the Age of #MeToo, and the Be Strong, Be Wise safety education program provide all the tools necessary to develop “safety-mindedness.” Be Strong, Be Wise includes reflective discussion to improve personal and group awareness while supporting healthy independence. Keener intuition, self-knowledge, people perception and communication skill are just part of what students will cultivate after reading this book and participating in the safety education program. For more information, check out bestrongbewise.com!

Author Amy Carpenter

Is it possible to actually teach and go home? Effectively? And still, be a good teacher? The answer is Yes! Educator and best-selling author Danielle E. Felton has served and helped educators in the field for over ten years. After the success and feedback from her bestseller, “Teach and Go Home: The Sophisticated Guide to Simplifying and Managing Your Workload and More”, Danielle is now sharing the secrets personally with a free copy of her best selling book.

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Author and Educator Danielle Felton