We’ve done the impossible. Somehow we managed to get through a school year like nothing we’ve been trained for and we held ourselves and our students together.
Now it’s time to tacet and take a moment to assess how YOU are doing.
What do you need to do over the summer to ensure YOUR mental, emotional, and physical health get a tune-up so you can enter the next school year with the stamina and renewed passion you have for the important work you do?
I’m very grateful to Paul Fox for his recent review of my latest book and share it in hopes that it provides some strategies that will be helpful for you as you consider how to recover from this year and move forward with less stress in spite of the traumatic year we’ve faced.
If you are wondering how to reset, recover, and renew in a way that makes teaching MUCH easier, then you might want to check out what Paul has to say. I’m sharing it with his permission. You can check out a ton of great stuff at his blog: www.paulfox.blog. You’ll want to bookmark that page for timely content.
REVIEW of Love the Job, Lose the Stress by Paul Fox (www.paulfox.blog)
In my “New Year’s blog” posted on December 29, 2020, I shared my advice on “how to make a difference in 2021” and told readers to find their own good role models and “positive gurus” to sustain their vision, motivation, and drive throughout the year.
Someone who has recently become inspirational to me is the wonderfully uplifting Lesley Moffat, probably an expert on the search for “mindfulness” in personal life and even during her band warm ups. In my opinion, her transformative stories provide the roadmap for happiness and wellbeing! She now has published two books (you need to read both) – I Love My Job But It’s Killing Me, and Love the Job, Lose the Stress, and if you are still teaching music full-time, you need to peruse her website: https://mpowerededucator.com/.
Now her latest book ties in all of the above enrichment and enlightenment – “successful social and emotional learning in the modern music classroom” – and adds an essential focus on teacher self-care and wellness. What was that saying attributed to Molesey Crawford in Unlocking the Queen Code?
- Know thyself.
- Love thyself.
- Heal thyself.
- Be thyself.
Lesley Moffat has taught high school band for over 32 years in the Pacific Northwest, with her ensembles earning superior ratings and performing all over the US, Canada, and even in Carnegie Hall. She was planning to retire at the end of 2019-2020 when the pandemic hit. (As far as I know at this time, she has not retired yet – “for the sake of her kids” she stayed throughout this challenging time of COVID-19 and the slow reopening of schools!) She clarifies this in the introduction to her Love the Job, Lose the Stress book:
“I completed the first draft of this manuscript on March 3, 2020. Ten days later, schools across the world began shutting down as the coronavirus began sweeping the globe… The ultimate purpose of this book is to share the protocol I created that has become the basis of the social and emotional learning needs for my students (and truth be told, for me). Everything I talk about in this book was true before the pandemic, and it has proven to be as powerful in a virtual environment as it is in person… The great news is that you can give your students the gift of learning to self-regulate, calm down, and focus without distraction through intentional design and practice.”
She offers an intriguing set of easy-to-read chapters in her “hard to put down” 191-page work.
- My Life’s Work Is So Much More Than Just A Job
- I Love My Job But It’s Killing Me
- The Badass Band Director’s Bible
- Step One: The Moffat Music Teacher Mojo Meter
- Step Two: Identifying the Three C’s – Care, Clarity, and Consistency
- Step Three: Identifying Your Priorities
- Step Four: SNaP Strategies for Music Teachers
- Step Five: Tuning Our Bodies
- Step Six: Creating Your Own First Four Minute Protocols
- Coda
- Fine
Highlights of suggestions from Love the Job, Lose the Stress
Like her last book, the Moffat Music Teacher Mojo Meter returns. If you are ever privileged to have her as a clinician for a local workshop, it is likely she may send out this survey to the participants in advance. These fifteen questions will provide her an individualized needs assessment of the stressors attendees are experiencing so she can differentiate the planning of her “help session” (page 48).
You’ll have a lot more questions to answer in Chapter 5 (page 50). Read and identify (and define for yourself) her three C’s for success: care, clarity, consistency.
In Chapter 6 (page 67), she wants you to identify your priorities. This is your chance to dream big! You’ll have to read her story (with wide swings of emotion) about her Jackson HS Honors Wind Ensemble performing at Carnegie Hall.
Also returning from her previous book, Chapter 7 (page 81) shares her Start Now and Progress – or SNaP to it – strategies for music teachers. Revisit her amazing tale about doing (of all things) push-ups: “By taking small incremental steps that build upon what I did each day before, I was able to take a skill that was very difficult for me on April 1 and do it 60 times just 30 days later.” She sums up three SNaP Strategies “for busy band directors” (page 90).
- Gratitude for the attitude
- Time stealers
- Reset yourself
Don’t miss her Chapter 10 (page 156) and “Lesley’s Top Ten Badass Band Director Tips!”
Finally, probably worth 1000-times the price of the book and all the time you will put into it is her Chapter 8 “Tuning Our Bodies” (page 103) and Chapter 9 “Creating Your Own First Four Minute Protocol” (page 129). This is where you will take what you read, reflect on her philosophies and system of classroom management and warm-ups, and adapt it to your situation. Adding to your teacher’s toolbox the techniques of mindfulness, breathing exercises, and listening skills – and practicing them with your students daily – will make all the difference in the SEL of your own lessons and overall program.
BRAVO and thank you Lesley for being so intuitive, upfront, and personal… and being so generous in sharing your secrets!
We applaud your efforts, and agree with Dr. Tim Lautzenheiser who said in the Foreword to Love the Job, Lose the Stress:
“This latest-greatest contribution offers a tried-and-true blueprint for vocational success while embracing the critical importance of fueling one’s mental, emotional and physical health. Spot on! Bull’s eye!”
“This is not a book you read and then put on the shelf; rather it is a file cabinet of priceless data certain to boister the health, happiness, and good fortune of every (music) teacher.”
“As music teachers, we teach students how to develop all kinds of skills, from mental to physical, in order for them to be well-rounded musicians. We show them how to properly form and embouchure, the correct fingerings to use, how to read music, what proper posture looks like, how to be artistic and expressive, and so much more. And we always tell them to “pay attention and “focus.” But do we ever teach them how to pay attention and focus? The secret to getting students engaged, focused, and curious so you can teach them all the cool stuff about music is teaching them how to actually build those skills until they become habits. Once you’ve taught them how to learn, then everything else becomes a million times easier for you and for them.”
— from the back cover of the Love the Job, Lose the Stress
Order your copy today to make the most of your summer!