🍽️ mPower Monday: The mPower Method – Meals

Tired? Low energy? Frequent headaches? Feeling sluggish? Having trouble sleeping or sleeping too much? Dealing with less-than-stellar physical changes that are draining your zest for life?

How much easier would it be to get through your busy day and make decisions if you didn’t have the brain fog and aches and pains draining your mental and physical energy?

As music teachers are acutely aware, having an expensive high-quality wooden clarinet in excellent shape contributes to a beautiful sound, ease of playing and better response than a crappy plastic clarinet. Imagine your life as the clarinet – and imagine for a moment that your life is like the best quality wooden clarinet made.

Now imagine that the only reed you have is old, a little moldy and chipped. Even though the clarinet is top-notch, it will be nearly impossible to get it to respond favorably if the reed won’t facilitate the necessary response.

What if you now think of your life as the clarinet and the reed as your fuel – your food. No matter what kind of shape you are in, if you are not consistently consuming the kind of fuel that supports your physical and mental needs, then it’s like trying to play a fantastic clarinet with a nasty reed. It just doesn’t work very well.

The same is true for you. You must have your fuel, which is food, in order to function. There is a direct correlation between the type and quality of food you consume and every aspect of your health. Period.

For fifty-one years, I firmly believed it was healthiest to stick to the traditional food pyramid, which was built on a diet of starches and carbs and low in fats, but look where that got me. I also fell for the rationale that my weight was a direct result of the number of calories I consumed. I had no clue that the quality of the calories played a bigger role in everything from my weight to my quality of life than the number of calories. Once I understood and embraced the truth that what I’d being doing for five decades wasn’t working for me, my life changed.

My initial goal when I began the healing part of my journey was just to feel well enough to work without getting sick again. Feeling great wasn’t even on my radar. I had hoped to be on a fraction of the medications I was on at the time, never dreaming that I would be weaned off all of the pharmaceuticals I’d been on for decades. And being 5’7” and 200 pounds when I was sickest, it never dawned on me that within months I would weigh 135 pounds and wear a size 4 – and that I would have abs and a toned body simply through the gentle practices of yoga and walking.

If I had been told that my ADHD symptoms would be gone and my memory would be sharper than it had been in twenty years, I’d have laughed at the ridiculousness of that possibility. I had no idea what was in store for me, but I’m certainly glad I hit rock-bottom so I could begin my journey out of the downward spiral into which I had fallen. It was through this experience that the four cornerstones of my mPower Method evolved, the result of my own assessment and discovery of what was causing me to feel so horrible and what was helping me feel and function better. Once I finally figured out what had been such a mystery to me for so many years, I knew I had to share it with others who were going through the same suffocating experience.

The first component of my mPower Method is meals. The meals you eat are the basis of everything from how you feel to how you function. What you put in your body literally becomes your body. Our cells are regenerating constantly. Think about it – if you are eating foods that have been treated with pesticides, are filled with artificial ingredients, and have antibiotics and other hormones added to them, then those things are all going into your body. Your body isn’t meant to use these things in productive ways that help you grow, heal, think, and function, so many of the processes your body goes through become impeded and don’t work like they should.

Years and even decades of eating stuff that didn’t benefit my body took its toll in the form of excess weight, acne, memory loss, brain fog, ADHD, pain, repeated infections, infertility, and dozens of other ailments. I had gotten to the point where I figured I was so far gone with such a long list of health problems that there was no turning things around, so I was about to settle for just “not getting any worse,” but eventually I realized that option really sucked. Why should I succumb to being sick, tired, overweight, in pain, and feeling like crap when there might be a different possibility out there? After all, I was only fifty-one at the time. I wasn’t ready to throw in the towel, so I figured it was now or never and I took a leap of faith and never looked back.

We have been taught in the past that we should be eating lots of fruits, veggies, and nonfat foods and avoiding fats. Our diets are inundated with sugars, grain, additives, preservatives, added hormones, and all kinds of other things our bodies weren’t made to process, so our bodies respond with aches and pains or brain fog in hopes of getting our attention and letting us know what we are doing isn’t working. When we ignore those symptoms, our bodies have to do something more drastic to get our attention so we will stop doing the things that are making us sick. I didn’t get the message until my body was riddled with all kinds of ailments, including painful arthritis due to swollen joints, migraines, difficulty sleeping, difficulty staying asleep, a lack of energy, and brain fog that was so bad I actually went to my doctor, afraid I had early-onset dementia.

The bottom line as to why I felt so crappy and was constantly sick was because I wasn’t giving my body the kind of nutrients it needed to work properly, so it simply couldn’t get or stay healthy. It really was that simple, and I found that out after just a week of eliminating gluten from my diet. (I had done lots of research and asked a lot of health care professionals questions to help me figure out where to begin. This was what made sense for me. Your first step should be based on your particular needs.)

That one small change was eye-opening, so I added another by eliminating grains as well. Within a week of completely avoiding grains (which is not an easy task), I noticed that I had lost five pounds without even trying, my joints weren’t quite as painful, and my brain fog didn’t seem as bad as it had been. It was a real wake-up call and it motivated me to try another change – and when that made a difference, I tried another and another. I became addicted to feeling good, and when I brought my awareness to how I felt after every meal, I was able to identify things within my control that I could do to change my health. And when I ate foods that my body needed, I eliminated fatigue and found myself energized. Food was proving to be the absolute building block of everything. I could control what went into my mouth, so I could control much more of how I felt than I ever realized. That was empowering!

My husband, George, was witnessing first-hand the power of how changing a few of my eating habits was impacting my body and how my health was improving. He, too, began incorporating more awareness with his food choices and at the age of 58 is trim, fit, and playing ice hockey on a regular basis!

I have spent the last couple of years paying very close attention to the impact food has on how I feel, think, and function. I’ve also read everything I can get my hands on to learn more about how and why food is such an important component in how we function because I now see the clear correlation. It comes down to the simple fact that food is the building block of every cell in your body, so doesn’t it make sense that the quality of what you put into your body impacts the quality of your body and what it can do? Every cell in your body regenerates on a regular basis, so you are making new cells 24/7. If you use high quality materials (the foods that your body needs to perform at its most efficient and best self) then you’re going to have a better quality of life. Period.

My lists of symptoms and the foods that trigger them is long. I had no idea that the root cause of so many of the ailments that had plagued me for so long came down to each decision I made about what to eat. I didn’t need to go on a particular diet, like Keto or low-fat. Instead, I needed to find out how my body reacted to everything from the types of food (dairy/meat/grain/etc.) to the quality (grass-fed/organic/hormone, antibiotic free, processed, added sugars, etc.) I was consuming. Once I understood this information, I could then make choices as to what I wanted to do. If I wanted to eliminate the symptoms that were making me so sick I couldn’t go to work and function any more, then I had to change my behaviors. If I wanted to continue down the path that I was on, which was pretty miserable at that point, then I could just continue eating the way I had been and I would have undoubtedly progressed even further on the unhealthy track I’d been on.

Society has made it super convenient for us to grab cheap and handy meals and snacks just about everywhere, but most of those options don’t support the needs we have for sustained energy and stamina or to keep us at a healthy weight. We get so busy with jobs and other life events that our default mode often falls into picking up meals that are readily available even if they aren’t serving our body’s needs. The suggestions in this book will help you rebuild your gut, which is your “soil” from which everything else in your body is run. Once you get your gut in better shape, you’ll feel the results throughout your entire body.

When flowers and leaves wither and die, we prune those parts away so they don’t suck precious energy away from the parts of the plant that are trying to thrive. The same is true for your life – we must release from our lives the things that are no longer serving us well, and that means having a heart-to-heart talk with yourself and deciding you are ready to conquer your health problems once and for all. This involves reevaluating what you are putting in your body based on how you know it makes you feel. If that feeling (outcome) is what you desire, then you can make the choice to support it by eating the foods that help your body attain and maintain health that allows you to do everything you need to do.

The most effective way I found of figuring out what worked for me was to deliberately monitor a specific food or food group and its impact on my health. When I finally came to this realization, it was hard to know where to start. I needed some kind of systematic way to learn which foods were possible culprits for my health issues so I could stop eating things that might be making me sick. I had to do a lot of research and visit a lot of professionals to come up with the information I needed in this process.

Once I compiled everything I learned about how food impacts our mental and physical health, I created the Mojo Meter as a way to assess my clients’ biggest health challenges. I based it on the process I used to figure out what I needed. Just like me, my clients need and expect to see results, and they need to see them fast. I had run out of patience and time for doing more of the same old treatments, and since they hadn’t worked before, I finally realized they weren’t going to work again, no matter how many times I repeated them. If I wanted different results, I needed different input. There was simply no getting around it. We will use your results from the mPower Meal Self-Assessment to help you figure out where to start your meal modifications.

mPower Meal Self-Assessment

I learned that the joint pain I’d experienced since I was a teenager wasn’t actually a lifelong sentence – once I eliminated the foods that caused excessive inflammation in my joints, I was addressing the root cause of the swelling, and I went from being dependent on anti-inflammatory and pain medications and a cane to needing no medications and no longer hurting! Not only has the cane become a thing of the past, but because of my yoga practice, my body moves in ways it never has before (more on this part later).

There are a lot of resources out there with one-size-fits-all health plans and diets. Those don’t take into consideration your particular health needs, environment, family, job, and other variables. It’s really hard to sift through everything and know what will work and what won’t, but I will walk you through some resources I found to be particularly helpful to help you discover what makes you function at your peak.

You are always one decision away from getting closer to your goal. You don’t have to make a million decisions about how to change everything all at once. Just one decision at a time. Don’t stress about your next decision or what you will do tomorrow. If you keep this principle in mind, you’ll find this to be much more manageable and sustainable for the long haul, and isn’t that what you are finally seeking to do?

At first it felt like modifying my diet was all about “taking away” everything I loved. My comfort foods, the things I could make in a hurry or meals I could pick up on my way home from work were ingrained in every aspect of what my family and I did, so making major changes that required a lot more thought, time, patience, and often money (yes, better quality food is more expensive than stuff that can be processed quickly and with inferior ingredients) was daunting, especially since I was tired and felt crappy. It wasn’t long, however, before I noticed how powerful the tradeoff was – if I took the time to plan, prepare, and eat the types of foods that supported my brain and body, I became invincible. It was crazy amazing … and addicting. It felt good to have the weight melt off. It amazed me to see how quickly my skin cleared up, to the point where I often go out in public without make up on because I now feel so comfortable. The more attention I paid to what I was eating and how it made me feel, the more control I had in changing my destiny. That was empowering and I was hooked.

Now that you are ready to turn your health around, it’s time to start with a self-assessment so you can begin the transformation you desire and deserve. I can tell you about what I did to get healthy, but I can’t do the work for you. I can do it with you and share the resources I used, and if you follow the advice, you’ll experience a freedom that comes with being well that changes your entire life. It becomes easier to do the things you have to do, and you find yourself feeling good enough to do the things you want to do (how long has it been since that’s happened?). There will be challenges, but you have the tools you need to overcome them. And if you want to jumpstart your wellness with a free self-assessment, I’ve got your back…

mPower Meal Self-Assessment

You won’t be changing all your habits at once. Instead, you want to find the ones that will have the biggest and most positive impact. Once you see and feel the connection between the food you are eating and the way your body responds, you’ll be amazed. Then decide if you like those changes. If you do, great. If not, then make a different change.

I was skeptical that food had anything to do with things like brain fog and arthritis pain, so I approached this with a suspicious but desperate mindset. Until I actually felt the incredible changes in my body, I hadn’t believed the meals I ate could be that powerful and have such an impact on every aspect of my mind and body. Boy, was I wrong!

I highly recommend keeping a food journal, even using an app to track what you’re eating – I know you’ve heard it before and it’s a drag, but it is an excellent tool for helping you see where you are making progress and where you still need help. It also makes it easier to make good food choices when you know you are holding yourself accountable in writing!

The food groups I suggest eliminating are based on research done from various medical practitioners, the resources listed at the end of this book, and what I’ve learned through years of practice with my own body. Your body will react differently than anyone else’s, so be sure to pay attention to how you feel. Write down not only what you eat, but how you feel before, during, and after your meals. A simple happy face, word, or other indicator is all you need to start seeing patterns in the relationship between your meals and how you feel.

As you begin to make one change and then another, you’ll be blown away by the results. By taking time each day to deliberately make choices about the meals you are using to fuel your brain and body, you are investing in a new and improved you, and that’s why you are here in the first place.

In a nutshell, from what I’ve found in my own practice and with those with whom I work, there are some key food groups that have a huge impact across multiple areas you’re trying to address. If you are struggling with weight, for example, your most effective way to address it is likely through the elimination of grains. Think about it – when farmers are fattening up their livestock, what do they feed them? Corn and other grains. Those grains do the same thing to your body that they do to the cows and pigs – they add weight and bulk you up. Don’t believe me? See what happens if you eliminate grains from your meals for just one week. Not only will weight begin melting off, but you might also be delighted to discover that your brain fog is clearing up, along with the painful swelling of your joints. The benefits will become evident and you will quickly come to feel the correlation between what goes in your body and how you function.

By now, you may be a bit worried about what you can eat. It may seem like all I’ve focused on is elimination of food groups. That’s because a huge part of getting and staying healthy is resetting your gut biome, and the only way to do that is to change what goes in your gut. But in addition to eliminating what isn’t serving you well, you must also be vigilant about providing high quality meals that support brain and body health.

The list of what you can and should eat is long. For example, high quality lean meat serves to provide you with protein that’s necessary for helping you function. Grass-fed beef and grass-fed dairy provide excellent sources of healthy fats that keeps you going longer and at a steadier pace than any carbs and sugar can do. If you are not able to process or choose not to eat meat, your protein sources could include tofu, eggs, and nuts.

Many people turn to salads and other raw foods in an attempt to get healthy. Kale and other dark green veggies are full of vitamins, but if your body has difficulty processing them, they may cause you distress. Simply cooking them in a small amount of broth or high quality oil (olive, coconut, or avocado) for a few minutes to wilt them begins the digestion process and makes them gentler on your belly while still allowing you to access the nutritional benefits.

ACTION PLAN:

Use a food journal or app on your phone to track your progress. Keep track of every food choice you make for the next twenty-one days. It takes that long to establish a new habit. And notice how you feel as your body adapts to the new changes. Sometimes the first few days our bodies actually feel worse before feeling better, so don’t let that get you down. Just acknowledge it and know it will get better. Don’t try to change everything at once – just the one thing you are focusing on at first.

Make a commitment to do your best to incorporate one new habit at a time because you are investing in your well-being so you can regain your energy, health, and vitality. You are worth it, so be as insistent on taking care of yourself as you would be if you were taking care of a loved one.

Be well!

👉Do I know anyone who can introduce me to Lin Manuel Miranda? 🤞 If that’s you, here’s why I need your help…

My 90 second video explains why I need 10 minutes of Lin-Manuel’s time.

If you’re the person who can help me make the connection, I’ll make sure you’re invited to the Zoom when it happens!

If you can make an introduction, send me an email at Lesley@mPoweredEducator.com and let’s make some magic happen!

THANK YOU!

Lesley

Setting Up Your Students for Success in Such an Unusual School Year Takes Intentional Planning and a Little Extra TLC

All summer, in spite of your best efforts, you’ve been thinking about all the obstacles you and your students face this year. Many of them may even seem insurmountable. And yet I bet you’ve come up with a lot of creative solutions for meeting many of your students’ academic needs this year, because that’s what educators do.

There are a ton of the platforms and apps that are out there help us facilitate a lot of the challenges that could otherwise seem insurmountable.

But there’s really no effective app that addresses your students’ social and emotional needs. YOU are the one who does that. You are the one who has to know her students well enough to figure out what their needs are before you can begin to help them with the struggles they face.

Do you have a plan for quickly and effectively identifying the challenges that will make it difficult for your students to be successful, especially in a virtual, hybrid, or way-different-than-normal-in-person teaching situation? How are you going to get them to truly think about and articulate their obstacles so you can use that information to drive your instruction and help them be successful?

And what are you going to do once you understand their obstacles? Do you have proven ideas for navigating this kind of situation with so many students and families who are experiencing so many hardships while trying to manage school and jobs and life during a pandemic?

This is all I’ve thought about and it’s my mission to help students become the best version of themselves through the magic of music education. When the rest of their world seems to be falling apart, we music teachers can help them make sense of it. We can give them the tools they need to manage their emotions, express themselves, and learn so much more than just how to play a few songs. But first we must meet them where they are.

If you know this is true but just don’t know where to start, I invite you to watch this short training I did that gives an idea of what you could do in the beginning of the year to get to know your students so you can better serve them. Starting with this step will save you a LOT of time and effort down the line.

The training is free. I hope you find it helpful. Please don’t hesitate to let me know if you have any questions.

With you on this journey –
Lesley

Free Training

FREE Sneak Peek of my latest book at mPoweredEducator.com/contact

Music Education 2.0 – Ready or Not, Here We Grow!

Music education has been my whole life. I love my career. And now EVERYTHING about what I’ve done for over three decades is completely different.

How on earth do we serve our students and sustain our programs in the middle of a pandemic?

I’ve seen so much change during my years as a teacher. Technology and society have caused our kids to grow up faster than they were physiologically programmed to do, and the impact from all the stimuli on their ability to function in this world is huge.

For the first thirty-one-and-three-quarters years of my career, there was a lot that changed, but nothing like what happened when the 2020 pandemic hit the planet and, at the speed of light, uprooting everything we ever learned about teaching. Suddenly, in what was going to be my final quarter of teaching, I found myself, along with every other teacher in the U.S. and beyond, completely reinventing how I taught as the world came to a standstill and schools were shut down across the globe. I had to learn to teach high school band online!

The first few weeks of the abrupt transition from face-to-face teaching to the isolation of being quarantined and figuring out how to meet the emotional and educational needs of my students was daunting.

As we started working through what it would look like for us to continue our band classes without being together, I came to realize that the daily practices and protocols I established with my students (who often come to class with challenges like anxiety, depression, and difficulty focusing) as a way to help them focus and be present for class were even more important now.

The daily practice we did in one another’s presence every day – taking four minutes to do breathing and relaxation together – up-leveled our in-class experiences because of the way it synchronized all the students each day, which caused our rehearsal time to be at least three to four times more productive than in the past. I knew that since our routine had such a positive impact on our ability to bring sixty-plus teenagers together and get them focused when we were in person, it was critical that we continued to practice that same routine when we were isolated and experiencing heightened anxiety and trauma. The ritual of getting our bodies and brains to relax each day before we started class was more important now than ever.

Kids are constantly told to “sit still and be quiet,” yet they’re never really taught how to harness their energy and social reflexes so they can actually sit quietly and focus their attention. Guess what happens when you actually teach students how to physiologically reset their bodies and brains so all of the restless energy (side conversations, excessive physical movements, difficulty focusing, inability to pay attention or remember) gets out of their way and they are able to start with a clean slate? It’s truly remarkable. It’s how we are biologically programmed to function at our best, so why not work with nature and teach our students how to tap into this? Once you do, you will be blown away at the changes: the ease of teaching, the attentiveness of the students, the retention of content, and a million other positive changes that take place as a result of taking the time to teach students this critical skill.

Teaching kids to get into this learning state is no different than teaching them technique on an instrument. It’s muscle memory – that is all. By practicing scales slowly, you train their muscles to respond in specific ways. The more you repeat patterns, the easier it is for them to execute those patterns and the quicker their responses become.

The same goes for teaching kids to settle down. Once your students practice a relaxation routine on a consistent basis, their bodies learn to be still because the muscles learn how to relax. Their brains are no longer in hyper mode; instead, they respond to this practice by learning to let go of the drama and other stuff floating around in their heads and become cleared out for whatever content or concept you want to introduce.

You have an incredible opportunity to help your students not just be successful musicians but to be exceptional human beings. Music teachers change the world. We are arguably the most influential adults on the planet. We have kids in our classes year after year after year. We watch them grow up. We are the only adults they see that frequently, sometimes even more than their parents, see them. So, we have important work to do – and we need the stamina to do it.

That’s where this book comes in. If I learned about the power of teaching this skill before diving into content with my students, I could have been a healthier and more effective teacher from the start. Instead, I spent the first three decades of my career teaching the way I was taught, actively handling classroom management and correcting behaviors instead of giving my students the skills to self-regulate so I could focus on teaching. It took a lot more energy (both physically and mentally) to teach when I didn’t have a daily routine to get everyone relaxed and focused.

For most of my life, I didn’t know how to relax, and teaching was a hyperactivity for me. I did it well, but managing all the components of a huge music program required active work, both mentally and physically. Even teaching classes took a lot of energy. Corralling the energy of sixty kids an hour, day after day, and motivating them to meet my goals was exhausting. Once I learned the power of teaching students to relax and settle that energy down before starting to teach class, everything became so much easier for all of us.

I’m a much more effective teacher now. Instead of force-feeding kids everything I believe they should know and feel, I facilitate their abilities to tap into the music and hear the message it has for them. I learned how to help them go from states of stress – where learning is difficult, if not impossible – to a place where their brains and bodies are receptive and ready to learn, remember, and recall what they’re discovering. It sounds like a whole new way of teaching, but really, it’s not. It’s the way we were programmed to learn.

When we teach students how to get into a learning state, teaching and learning become so much easier, leading to less stress for you and your students.

This process can be used by children of all ages and across all socio-economic statuses, cultures, orientations, and marginalization, including over-achievers and AP/Honors kids. In fact, it’s often most effective for the kids you’d least expect.

Just like a carpenter needs the proper tools and high-quality wood and a plan if he is going to create a craftsman-style piece of furniture, teachers need tools to do their jobs well, too. One of the most powerful tools a teacher has is being able to guide their students into a readiness-to-learn state before delivering content. This one simple step has more impact on every aspect of student growth than any other pedagogical tool I encountered in the more than 30,000 classes I taught over the course of my career.

This book is my way of sharing what I learned so other band directors can do the important work of teaching in a way that is easier and more effective for them and their students. I want to support them in their efforts to be positive role models and mentors for their students. I want to work with teachers who realize that our roles include shaping kids into responsible and respectful human beings through the magic of music education. It takes a lot of stamina to do this year after year, and I am here to share strategies that support dedicated music teachers who are called to change kids’ lives for the better.

Under the best of circumstances, teaching is stressful and exhausting.

After our 2020 health crisis, it’s going to be even more so, and unless you have a plan in place for how you’ll help students cope with the strange new world in which we live, it’ll be overwhelming and daunting for you and your students.

If you have a routine that already works, then now is the time to reevaluate it and see what you might need to tweak in order to meet the new needs of your students. Most of them will be affected by everything that happened as a result of the pandemic, so teaching-as-usual will be anything but usual. You know your students and community best, so you can use this book as a guide to help you assess and possibly redesign what you do in light of our new normal.

If you don’t have a routine you use to help your students overcome the distractions of life so they can focus in your class, then I’m especially glad you picked up this book! Now’s your chance to practice some new skills that will help you and your students get the most out of your classes in spite of the added stress, anxiety, depression, and more they’ll be dealing with.

This book outlines the process I designed and implemented in my classroom and is set up to help you create a plan to successfully teach music to students who will be forever changed after this worldwide shift in education and life as we once knew it.

My work with my students always comes from a place of love. As I came to what was going to be the end of a long and fulfilling career in music education in June of 2020, I found myself being called to stay in my classroom and community a little while longer. I see the writing on the wall and know there will be massive shifts in everything we do as educators now, so I made the commitment to remain with my students and walk beside them on this journey. Providing them with the stability of our routines together during a time of upheaval and uncertainty is essential not just for them but for me, too. Now more than ever, they need to continue to practice what we were doing every day in class – relaxing amidst the chaos.

Because my students and I learned to make our classroom a place where we decompress together every day, I know I will have the stamina to be present with them as we adapt to our new ways of doing things. Even though we will all have more reasons to be distracted with each passing day and the rapid changes taking place to education and we will undoubtedly experience plenty of stressful situations, we will forge ahead with our daily routine that allows us to settle into an hour of magical music-making together, where we can put our worries and distractions on the back burner and use music as a tool to help us cope, heal, and express ourselves.

This book is the culmination of my life’s work and shares the most powerful wisdom I gained from my decades of experience as a busy band-directing mom who managed to build a successful band program in spite of a million obstacles. My wish for you is that you will find it to be instrumental in helping you be that badass band director you were born to be so you can be there for your students for a long time to come.

Check out a FREE SNEAK PEEK of Love the Job, Lose the Stress: Successful Social and Emotional Learning in the Modern Music Classroom now!

FREE SNEAK PEEK

Today Was My Final Evaluation, and I Ended Up In Tears.

It’s my 32nd year of teaching, so this shouldn’t have been a big deal. I’ve been through dozens of these and had no reason to believe this would be any different other than the fact that it was taking place online due to the pandemic.

Mr. Peters and I met on Zoom, and after exchanging pleasantries, he screen-shared my evaluation form.

There on page six he had a running narrative of what was going on in the classroom:

T askes Ss to raise their hands if they had a trill at the end.
T: …We don’t breathe before the deedle-eedle-eet – that would sound silly… I want you to hear the melody and realize how hard it is at this speed, because they have to take in gigantic amounts of air in…
T: Keeping a beautiful tone at all times, you’re doing a nice job keeping long phrases – keep doing that.
T stopped Ss playing just after a measure.
T: I’m going to show you what I heard and then I’m going to show you what I want.
T demonstrated the measure using the piano, tune with different fingers coming in at slightly different times vs. all simultaneously. Told Ss to “Lock in even better… nice and together.” Acknowledged when she heard the improvement she was looking for.
S took responsibility – “I know what I did.” T thanked him, moved on.
T: I loved that we didn’t all start our articulations the same and that you eventually came together!

As he scrolled through a couple more pages of that narrative, I saw in front of me what an ordinary day used to be like in the band room at our school. Oh, the things I took for granted.

I was reminded of the sense of accomplishment we’d feel when we’d woodshed a passage and finally master it. Or the wave of emotion that would sweep over all of us when we’d executed a passage with exceptional passion. Or the simple thrill of watching that third clarinet player finally get over the break without alarming the rest of the band with horrible squeaking.

All of the seemingly ordinary things we did every single day at school seem so much more significant now that we have been away from our kids for a couple of months. I long for the days when we could high-five ’em as they walked in our classrooms and then settle them in for 55 minutes of music and memory-making.

As I read the narrative of what happened in my classroom during wind ensemble on that ordinary day in November, tears poured from my eyes as it finally sunk in just how precious that time together had been. Those days in our classrooms did so much more than just teach kids how to play songs. Through the process of developing as musicians, I watched them grow up. I watched them overcome personal struggles and challenges. I grew to love them not just as music students, but as humans. We’d become a family and suddenly the pain of being ripped from my band family was really raw and all I could do was cry.

I am sad for so many things that we’ve lost as a school, community, nation, and world. I worry about the future of everything from education to survival and more. And I wonder how I can continue to be a band director and serve my students in a post-pandemic world.

I don’t have all the answers, but I know it’s up to me to do a few things:

Identify the core values and concepts I am charged with teaching my students
Figure out how to deliver that content in a safe and meaningful way
Implement strategies that will help me sustain my own mental and physical health so I can support my students for the long-haul

If you are a music teacher who is looking for strategies to support the long-term survival of your music program and sustainable ways for you to balance work and family lives while you do this important work, then I invite you to do a self-assessment that can help you identify your readiness for what lies ahead. It will help you ask yourself the questions you need to face as you plan for what’s next.

We have important work to do, and I, for one, plan to be ready to serve my students in spite of the obstacles that will arise as we get closer to September. Budget cuts, loss of performance and trip opportunities, and the fear of the unknown can be crippling – but our kids are counting on us to be brave, step up, and be there for them.

Take five minutes and check-in with yourself using this self-assessment. The peace of mind that comes when you get the clarity you need to take the next step can make the difference between stepping into the next few months in fear or with purpose. I choose purpose!

Self-Assessment for Music Teacher Readiness-for-September

🎼 Teaching Music in a Post-Pandemic World… 🎺 Are You Going to Figure It Out or Freak Out? 💪or 😧?

How will you make sure your students and program survive through all the growing pains facing us in music education?

Join veteran band director and author Lesley Moffat as she discusses how to assess your readiness to return to teaching music in the fall. Lesley will present strategies to help you define your core values as a teacher, set goals for teaching to those values, outline strategies to achieve them, and design a 4-Minute Protocol to help students focus their minds and make rehearsals the best part of their day.

Lesley Moffat has taught high school band for over thirty years in the Pacific Northwest. Following decades of chronic illness and exhaustion that were the result of the stress that comes with running a band program, she revamped her teaching strategies to support a healthier balance and lifestyle. Now on a mission to help other music teachers navigate the responsibilities of teaching music in a post-pandemic educational system, she founded the mPowered Music Educator Academy, where she runs the Band Director Boot Camp – a program that gives the music teacher tools to build a successful program without burning out.

Lesley is the author of I Love My Job but It’s Killing Me as well as the upcoming Love the Job, Lose the Stress.

How Will We Sustain Ourselves, Our Students, and Our Programs During and After This Pandemic?

Are you a “Type-A, super-organized, ultra-planner” who is used to being in control kind of teacher and now feels like a fish out of water as you undo all of your spring events, plan new activities for distance learning, and try to figure out what next year might look like for you and your program?

This is a pretty unnerving place to be, especially for those of us who like to plan in advance and be prepared. How can we possibly do that for our programs when we have no idea what next year might look like? How can we offer music classes to students and grow our ensembles when being socially distant might mean limited in-person classes and activities next year?

Now that the initial shock and disbelief that our in-person school year ended in March has worn off, many of us are beginning to wonder how we are possibly going to be able to do our jobs when school finally does resume. There are so many unknowns about what education will look like that it can be paralyzing, frightening, and extremely overwhelming to think about. And when we consider the impact all this can potentially have on our music programs, well, it can be downright discouraging.

I remember the same kind of feeling after 9/11.

I was just starting my 14th year of teaching. As a parent, I was scared about what this tragic event meant for my own kids’ future. My girls were 4, 8, and 12 at the time, and in order for my husband to remain employed, he had to transfer to a different work location, making his commute three or more hours per day. I found myself with very long days that started with zero period jazz band classes and ended with evening activities, trying to balance the extra parenting responsibilities I had while my husband was commuting. As a teacher in the changing landscape of education after that event and the stressors that came with it, I really struggled to keep it all together.

Fast-forward 19 years. Ready or not, as a result of this pandemic, we are at another major changing point in education. Having experienced teaching and parenting after a major event that impacted life as we had known it before, I am prepared to share what I learned through my personal story so other teachers can skip a lot of the growing pains and be the teachers, parents, and partners they want to be and come out stronger on the other side.

Educators are natural leaders. Being a leader at a time like this requires vision, passion, and stamina. Being a leader during distance learning while juggling your own family, limited access to resources, and sketchy internet can be incredibly challenging. But as music teachers, we are not intimidated by challenges. In fact, we often thrive in situations that seem impossible to mere mortals.

If you are a music teacher with a vision of helping your students be the best version of themselves through the magic of music education and you want to be a leader who does that in spite of the circumstances, then I want to invite you to check out my new book.

In my latest book, I share all kinds of strategies and resources that will help you do this important work efficiently, with greater ease, and with less of a drain on your energy. Having taught more than 30,000 classes in my career while raising a family of my own, I’ve walked the walk and am delighted to be able to pass on what I’ve learned.

The book will be published next month, but YOU can get a FREE advanced copy of the ebook NOW and get started on tapping into strategies for your long-term stamina as a music teacher!

If you read it and find it helpful, I’d love to know. In fact, if you send me any feedback before May 4, I can include it in the eBook that will be published next month on Amazon! I would be really grateful for any reviews because that will help me get it into more people’s hands, and that was the whole reason for writing it in the first place. 🙂

I’m really grateful to Dr. Tim for his enthusiastic support. I put a sneak peek of his foreword below so you can see for yourself if this information will be helpful for you.

In-person teaching will one day resume. It will look different than what we’ve known it to be. We can either wait and see what happens, or we can be the leaders and visionaries who use our platforms as music educators to shape the future of music education.

Our students are counting on us, so let’s do this!

FREE Advanced Copy eBook!

Foreword

by Dr. Tim Lautzenheiser

Lesley Moffat’s newest book, Love the Job, Lose the Stress, redefines the term “self-help.” Her first best seller, I Love My Job, but It’s Killing Me, awakened us to a new landscape of personal and professional sanity. 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!

What is uniquely wonderful about Lesley’s writing is based on her own teaching journey. Her wisdom reflects reality rather than hypothesis. She has “been to the well,” she “walks her talk,” and she does it with a sense of understanding unknown in common hours. Rather than simply focusing on the obvious, she delves into the why, what, and how of the given situations:

Here’s why you need to take stock of this concern or breakdown.
This is what you can do to reset your compass to achieve resolution.
… and this is how you can do it to reach your destination.

A bit of history: By all standards, Lesley Moffat was at the top of her teaching (band directing) career. She developed a program-of-excellence recognized (and envied) by her colleagues. The numbers grew, the quality soared, and the awards continued to spotlight this one-of-a-kind culture-of-artistic-excellence being driven by her ongoing desire to serve the students, the school, and the community. However, all of this manifested at the expense of Lesley’s health and well-being. To attain these high, self-appointed educational standards, she was short-changing the most important part of her program: Lesley Moffat. Let us be reminded of this cornerstone truth: “You can’t lead others until you lead yourself.” Fortunately, she recognized her plight and executed a massive course-correction. Now, we are the benefactors of her self-explored research via her trademark writing talents.

This manuscript is an endless treasure chest of immeasurable value. From the self-reflection templates to proven time-management skills, each page reveals yet another golden nugget you can integrate into your own daily agenda. This is not a book you read and then put on the shelf; rather it is a file cabinet of priceless data certain to bolster the health, happiness and good fortune of every (music) educator.

We’ve all heard the familiar teacher outcry, “I’m tired. I’m frustrated. My health is suffering. I live in stress. I don’t have a life. I don’t know what to do. I want to give-up. I’m just plain burnt out!” It truly is “a sad state of affairs” when one experiences this kind of desperation. Might I suggest that reading Love the Job, Lose the Stress offers-up a powerful prescription availing us to a personal/professional avenue arriving at one’s desired contentment and fulfillment.

Lesley, thank you! We know the master teachers are also keystone role models. That being said, you are an exemplar for all of us!

Where Do I Start to Rebuild My Students and Music Program after This Pandemic?

Helping your students and program thrive after this long school shutdown and months without in-person instruction is going to be incredibly challenging, even for the most experienced teachers among us.

And supporting your students while you are grieving the loss of this school year, missed opportunities, and proper goodbyes will be emotionally draining.

What’s your plan for maintaining your own sanity and stamina so you can serve your students without experiencing the emotional drain of secondary trauma? And how will you engage students who will experience increased anxiety, depression, distractions, and trauma of their own that will make learning even harder for them?

I’ve thought about this a LOT, and in week three of Music Ed Mondays with Moffat, I go through some concrete steps you can take to help you prepare to teach in a post-COVID world.

I can’t make your situation change, but I can share proven strategies for coping with the emotional and physical toll it takes to effectively connect with students and reach them when they are struggling with difficult issues that make it challenging for them to settle down and focus on learning.

I invite you to check out this link for all of the webinars and slide decks, which include links to tons of FREE resources I’ve created in my mission to help music teachers combine their passion for music education with a lifestyle that keeps them healthy enough to have the stamina to stay in the job for a very long time.

Previous Music Ed Monday Webinars and Resources

Please join me on my webinars every Monday in April for Music Ed Mondays and use the time you are away from school to prepare for the new kind of educational environment in which we will all be immersed. You can be a leader in the transformation or wait and see what happens then figure out what to do. I prefer to be proactive and prepared, and I hope you’ll come on this journey with me.

Webinar Registration

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it every day for the rest of my life – music educators change the world. Let’s do this together.

Peace-
Lesley

I remember teaching after 9/11. The events of that one day had a ripple effect that impacted every classroom in America in many different ways.

Things were very different as a teacher, parent, and community member after September 11.

The images of the planes hitting the towers and all of the horrible things that happened impacted students who already struggled with anxiety.

The event and everything that happened afterward triggered depression and impacted kids’ (and teachers’) ability to focus. Parents became reluctant to let their kids participate in events that required traveling very far for fear that we didn’t know what was safe anymore.

Returning to the classroom and establishing a new normal and doing that while leading hundreds of students through it at the same time took a lot of energy and mental stamina as we navigated new territory. I had to learn new ways to engage students who were dealing with all kinds of stressors that made it difficult for them to learn. Simply jumping back in and teaching the same old way wasn’t going to serve my students. They needed more than that and I had to figure it out fast!

As I think about returning to school post-COVID 19, I realize education will look very different once again.

The miracles teachers have worked in a matter of weeks and days to still serve students in spite of every school in the country being shut has been nothing short of astonishing. Now that we’ve explored many innovative ways of delivering music education through virtual teaching during the stay-at-home orders, we have new tools at our disposal, so the actual teaching we do may look different as we begin to implement some of the new ways with the old.

But the biggest challenge we face as teachers will be helping our students put pieces back together. During the school closures, we all know there are some kids who will have enriching experiences and others who will struggle with some pretty scary situations. Some will academically be just fine, but others will have slipped further behind while school’s been closed. We may not have a chance to say goodbye to our seniors or other kids, and when we do finally get back in the classroom, we’ll all be wondering what’s next.

I don’t plan on waiting until school starts again to figure out what to do. I’ve already lived through a major change in society that impacted education and I can see the potential pitfalls and opportunities that are around the corner for us as educators. We can either react to the new situations we face when they happen in class, or we can be prepared to support our students and ourselves in ways that are sustainable.

Join me for FREE Music Ed Mondays with Moffat at 9:00 AM pacific time where I will share strategies you can think about now so you and your students are prepared for creating and nurturing a new normal when we get to go back to school.

This is the perfect time to evaluate your vision for your music program and take the steps you need to take to make the transition back to school successful for you and your kids.
I’ve been through a similar experience and would love to share what I’ve learned so you don’t have to figure this out on your own!

If you can’t make it to the webinar live, register anyway and I’ll send you the replay.

With you on the journey
Lesley

After 32 years as a high school band director, I was going to retire this year. But things have changed.

Now is not the time to leave my students. I still have work to do and I need to be in my classroom with my kiddos when they return to school next year for a different kind of experience than what any of us have known.

In addition to the many ways they’ve always counted on us, our students will need us in new and different ways. It will require intentional preparation to have the mental, emotional, and physical stamina to serve them without becoming overwhelmed in the process.

This is the exact topic of my second book, which comes out in May, but I’m going to be sharing the content NOW because it’s relevant to any music teacher who wants to use this time to be prepared for what’s to come but who doesn’t know where to start.

I’ve already thought through a lot of this and have a plan – and I’m going to share it with you so you don’t have to start from scratch.

Join me tomorrow for Music Ed Mondays with Moffat to find out why I believe our roles as music educators are critical to the healing of our students and communities during and after this pandemic and resulting upheaval to everything we’ve ever known.

I will share a plan you can access for no cost that will guide you step-by-step through the process of being fully prepared to support yourself and your students through crisis and beyond.

The webinars will be on Mondays at 9:00 am pacific time and I’ll share how you can access the full course of my signature program that goes with my second book, Love the Job, Lose the Stress, for FREE!

_______________________

You are invited to a Zoom webinar.
When: Mar 30, 2020 09:00 AM Pacific Time (US and Canada)
Topic: Music Educator Mondays with Moffat

Webinar Registration

After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the webinar.

Can’t make it? Register anyway and I’ll send you a recording!

With you on this journey.