Tag: teacher burnout

Exhausted?😒 Physically struggling? 😢 Feel like you’ll never be caught up no matter what you do? 🤷‍♀️ Do you recognize the impact of the stress that comes with all the things demanding your time and energy and realize it’s not sustainable? 🤮

You’re not alone. I know the feeling all too well. As a music teacher, you pour your heart and soul into your work. But are you finding that your passion is turning into pain? Are you feeling overwhelmed and stressed, with no time for yourself or your loved ones?

I understand the challenges that come with being a music teacher and what that does to one’s well-being. The constant demand for lesson planning, rehearsals, fundraising, community events, sporting events, trips and performances can leave you feeling drained and burnt out.

And if you have a family or want to have a life outside of school, yeah, we all know what that feels like after a long day of work.

But there is hope.

I have found a solution that has helped me regain control of my time and energy and reignite my passion for teaching music.

I would like to introduce you to The mPower Method, a unique approach to teaching music that helps music teachers to find a healthier balance and reduce stress.

The mPower Method is a combination of unique classroom strategies, time management techniques and self-care practices that have been specifically designed for busy music teachers.

Over the course of the next few months, I’m going to share bite-sized strategies you can use to help you combat the drain that teaching music, especially since the pandemic, has become.

From the classroom to your personal life, the mPower Method addresses the unique stressors and challenges that come with the demands of being a music educator and gives you “homework” that will have you looking at your current practices and what you might be able to tweak to do this job in a more sustainable way.

Imagine if you had a student who was struggling playing a passage on trombone. She was trying to go quickly back and forth between a Db and an F, desperately attempting to repeatedly go from fifth to first position and feeling frustrated because it is hard. If you saw her struggling, you’d likely introduce her to the option of using an alternate position for F, in sixth position, so suddenly it becomes very easy to quickly go between fifth and sixth positions. It’s a small change, but the result is mastering something with more ease and in a more effective way. She saves time and wasted energy with this one slight change.

That’s the principle behind the mPower Method. I share the strategies that have worked for me and thousands of people I’ve worked with to help you find ways to do things that bring as much ease as the discovery of an alternate fingering for a difficult passage does for a struggling musician.

Through the mPower Method, you will learn how to:

  • Identify the areas in your life that are causing the biggest threat to your physical and mental well-being
  • Create small changes that have enormous impact on your time, energy and ability to keep doing this important work in a healthier way
  • Implement practices to maintain your physical and emotional well-being while still delivering a fabulous experience for your students
  • Have more time and energy for doing the things you love, like spending time with friends and family without being drained

Stay tuned for mPowered Mondays and begin turning things around now!

Don’t let the demands of being a music teacher consume you. Join me on a journey to discover the power of the mPower Method and reclaim your love for teaching and passion for music.

If you can’t wait for the weekly tidbits and want to get started on a healthier journey now, click the button below for a complimentary strategy session where we will talk about your particular challenges and I’ll help you fast-track your transition from loving the job that’s killing you to loving your job and reducing your stress!

Imagine how good it will feel to finally take control after three years of teaching through unimaginable situations. This has been a rough road and I want to invite you to hop on board for this health journey.

Get started now!

To Stay or Not To Stay, That was the Question

Last year at this time I was struggling. A lot. So much so that I invested $10k in an agency to help me find a job outside of education. I just couldn’t do it anymore. Years 33 and 34 nearly broke me.

We were back in the building after 18 months of online teaching and everything was supposed to be “back to normal.” But it wasn’t and I found myself in a really sad and dark place.

A week before schools shut down at the beginning of the pandemic, I finished my manuscript for Love the Job, Lose the Stress, and as we found ourselves thrown into everything that came with teaching during this time, I felt like a fool for having written a book with a title like that!

I found myself no longer loving my job. It wasn’t the stress that was the problem, it was that I found I’d lost my joy in the very thing that used to light me up. Being in the same space where I’d had decades of growth and incredible memories became a different place after Covid disrupted everything. I found that just walking into my bandroom became a trigger for sadness, grief and despair.

The trauma of teaching during the pandemic is real. In my work with teachers who are in the same situation, they are trying to figure out if they should stay in the profession or if it’s time to find a new path because they’ve felt this same struggle.

I knew that if I was going to successfully go into a non-educational field, I would need help with everything from getting my resume updated so it resonated with companies for whom I wanted to work to preparing for interviews and getting clarity with the kind of role I was seeking.

I found a company that specializes in career transitions, made a huge financial investment and dove in to the process with the intent of finding a job that would allow me to walk away from teaching and into something where I could once again find joy and purpose.

I diligently showed up to all the coaching calls. I did the homework. I spent a lot of time asking myself hard questions. I began to get clear on my goals and narrow down the kind of work I needed to do in order to thrive.

And then I found it.

The result wasn’t at all what I expected. After all, when I dropped that kind of money, I fully anticipated I’d be making a change into a corporate role working year-round at something like education or performance travel, curriculum design or arts advocacy.

The process I was going through helped me gain clarity on my goals:

  • Find a role where I could have a positive impact on others
  • Make a difference for youth who have experienced trauma
  • Make at least the amount I was making in my current teaching role
  • Have generous time off
  • Love what I do

Once I got real clarity on my goals, I found the perfect role that fulfills all these goals (and more) and it wasn’t at all what I expected it to be.

The job that came to the surface for me showed up because it checked all the boxes in my goal list:

  • I make a positive impact on others
  • I work directly with youth who have experienced trauma (pandemic and more)
  • I make the same amount of money I made in my former role
  • I work 183 days a year
  • I LOVE what I am doing – it’s fresh and new but still familiar
It feels so good to thrive in the classroom again!

After gaining clarity on my goals by working with someone who guided me through the process and helped me identify the right choice for me, the answer became crystal clear.

Last June I was shocked to find myself asking my middle school feeder director if he’d switch jobs with me. I realized that I still found passion and purpose in teaching music, but all of the additional evening and weekend commitments that go with being a high school band director, expecially since the pandemic hit, no longer brought me the joy it used to. I needed the connections with students and being a teacher is in my blood, but after 35 years of doing this work, it was time for a change, and the change that turned out to be right for me was literally right under my nose.

Since making the decision to swap jobs and move to the feeder middle school, I’ve found renewed happiness in my life’s work. I truly thought leaving teaching was my only option, and for many people that is the right choice, but for me, going through this process guided me to the right place for me to be.

Are you at a crossroads? Are you questioning whether or not you can or should continue down the path of teaching or pursue something else in order to find your joy? Do you wonder how you’d even begin looking for a job outside the education field?

Well, I invested a lot of time and money in figuring out how to find a role that is right for me and I’m sharing what I learned with you!

Join me for Should I Stay or Should I Go? Gaining clarity and making a plan for career fulfillment. I’ll host this informal session for free and share a few key things I learned from my $10k investment to save you some time and money!

At this interactive discussion on Thursday, January 6 at 4:00 pacific time, you’ll learn:

  • How to identify whether your current situation is a healthy and appropriate place for you to be
  • Important timeline and steps to take to transition from teaching to another career
  • How to edit your resume so it appeals to employers you’re targeting
  • How to get yourself out there on LinkedIn and other places where you can be discovered
Sign me up!

As a FREE BONUS, attendees will receive a copy of my “teacher” resume and the “corporate” resume created by the company I hired so you can create your own resume by translating your teacher skills into verbiage that resonates in the corporate world. (Save yourself thousands of dollars by using this tool!)

We are at the time of year when teachers need to think about next year’s contract. Right now there’s time for you to look at your options, but soon you’ll have to sign a contract and be locked in for another year. Or you need to get some clarity on what you want and take the steps to make it happen. I can help.

If you’re like a lot of the music teachers I’ve worked with over the past several years, you’ve been through a LOT of changes and now is the time to pause, reassess and move forward in a way that supports your mental and physical health.

I hope you’re happy and fulfilled in your current role, but if you’re not and you’re wondering what to do next, you should come to this conversation.

With you on this strange journey –

Lesley