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.
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.
If that seems a bit overwhelming to you in the current situation, you are not alone.
Music teachers are known for being uber-prepared, super organized, and ready for anything. And now our whole world has been turned upside down, and yet we teachers, who are still trying to acclimate to this unusual scenario, are redesigning everything we’ve ever done and are working miracles to ensure our students don’t miss out on learning while we’re apart.
But this is SO hard to do – especially since there’s almost TOO much information out there to filter through. That’s why I’m offering to help.
In case you missed it, on Monday’s webinar I shared a few things that you might find helpful during the school shutdowns and resulting upheaval to education as we know it. A few highlights from the webinar include:
Understanding the “three types of teaching,” pre-, during-, and post-COVID
Recognizing how our roles as music educators are changing and will continue to change and how to use this opportunity to grow rather than feel overwhelmed
Discovering the power of how we music teachers can emerge as leaders to help our students and communities deal with the losses and changes that are happening at warp speed
I want to be sure to invite you to be part of my FREE series on Mondays in April where I’ll deep-dive into the content of my second book, in which I teach teachers how to reduce their own stress levels and how to most effectively teach students who come to us distracted by overstimulation of electronic devices, anxiety, depression, ADHD, and so many other things that keep them from learning.
When I wrote the book, I knew teachers around the world struggled for ways to keep students engaged in a very distracting world. Now more than ever, the techniques I share in my book are critical building blocks for helping students and teachers adjust to a new normal that faces us when we return to school.
Rather than waiting until the book comes out in May, I am sharing the content on these webinars NOW. This is the time to start thinking about how you’ll teach students who have experienced all kinds of trauma, new stressors, and situations that will make “normal” learning even more challenging.
I’ve taught over 30,000 classes during my career (so far!) Long before the COVID-19 outbreak happened, I’d experienced personal challenges of teaching when I was dealing with my own stress and exhaustion, and over the years I’ve seen more and more kids coming to my classroom with all kinds of barriers that make it difficult for them to learn.
That’s why I wrote my books – to share what I learned so you can learn from my lessons and not have to struggle as much. The content of the books are more relevant now than ever.
Here’s what Dr. Tim Lautzenheiser said about my most recent book:
“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.”
Dr. Tim Lautzenheiser, excerpt from the foreword for Love the Job, Lose the Stress, releasing in May 2020
Join me on Music Ed Mondays to dig in to the new realities of what it takes to be a successful music educator in a post-COVID world. See you on Monday! Lesley
Maybe you’re so overwhelmed right now that you haven’t thought very far beyond how to survive and function as the whole world is transitioning from what we’ve always done and known into a completely different reality.
I’m 54 years old – I was set to retire this year, and for the final few months of this school year, it looks like I’ll have the opportunity to completely revamp everything I’ve ever done!
I understand your stress. And I also know what you can do right now to protect yourself from going to those dark places where you feel so overwhelmed that you just want to give up.
Filtering through all the information that is coming at us and changing by the minute can put us in survival mode, which makes it impossible to access the parts of our brain where creativity and planning and functioning are regulated. It feels chaotic as everything we’ve ever done has completely been upended. And on top of making sure we and our families are okay, we are now thrust into a world where we must figure out how to teach band, choir, orchestra, and other music classes online.
Online. Seriously.
When I was at Indiana University in the early 1980s, computers weren’t really a thing for most of us. For the first seven years of my teaching career, I didn’t even have a computer at school. Everything I taught was done with me in front of my class delivering instruction and interacting with my students in real time.
Teaching face-to-face was how we learned and how we learned to teach. But in light of COVID 19, everything I’ve been doing in person with my students for the past 32 years has come to a grinding halt and, like you, I must figure out how to connect with my students and their families and somehow deliver meaningful experiences for them in spite of not being able to be physically present with them.
Even though I am a pretty chill woman who has been there and done that, I, too, am experiencing anxiety about how I can serve my students in a situation and future that are unpredictable.
I figured that I’m probably not the only one who needs to have coping mechanisms in order to not just survive but actually thrive, so I wanted to be on the forefront in talking about how music teachers can minimize the stress and maximize the opportunities that are arising.
Dr. Matthew Arau and I teamed up on Monday to share what we’ve learned in our combined nearly six decades of music education experience to help you cope with the stress that comes in the moment as you are trying to figure out how to get through each day as well as what you can do to prepare for a smooth re-entry when you and your students return to school.
Things will be very different. We can help you prepare now so your new normal will be one where you and your students can thrive. I hope you’ll check out our webinar and tons of free resources we’ve put together for you.
You are not alone in this. Reach out to people like us rather than spinning your wheels and trying to figure it out on your own.
Music educators have always changed the world through the magic of music education – and we’re gonna keep doing it no matter what obstacles arise.
PS – Join me next Monday at 9:00 am pacific time to talk about what you can start doing NOW to make returning to your classroom as smooth as possible for you and your students.
I am STOKED to have Dr. Matthew Arau of #upbeatglobal joining me on a webinar for Music Educator Monday this week at 9:00 AM pacific / noon eastern time, where we will talk about the realities of what our roles as music educators are during school closures and what we should be prepared for when we return to our classrooms, whenever that may be.
Matthew and I will be sharing our thoughts about the critical role music teachers play in helping our students and communities cope during this crisis.
We’ll also be sharing tools you can use to keep your own stress levels managed so you have the stamina to do this for the long haul.
If you can’t make it to the webinar, register anyway and I’ll send you the replay.
