I’m sure you’ve heard that there’s a lot of government funding out there for schools! In this episode, I bring in my friend Mike Kamphuis, Managing Director of the Division of Education at Conn Selmer, who has been working for more than a decade to help schools get more funding. We’ll take you through the steps you need to take to access these funds for your program—no fundraising or grant-writing needed.

This episode fulfills a request from so many listeners—to bring on exemplary teachers who have been “boots on the ground” in the classroom over the past year, during the pandemic. So today I interview my friend Steve Graves, a composer and arranger with more than two decades of teaching in middle school band who has truly embraced what is possible teaching in the online space.

In this episode, I spoke with Jeremy Ulrich, Senior Division Director of Bands at Milton Hershey School in PA, about creating a classroom culture—which we should be revisiting now! We talk through what we need to be doing to establish rapport, set up our classrooms for success, and to have standards for classroom management. These are all great things to start planning as we look forward to the next school year. We have an opportunity now to build back stronger and better than ever!

Have you ever debated changing careers? I’m a prime example of someone who loved teaching, would happily go back to teaching, but took a great leap of faith to refocus my career on what I’ve viewed as a more impactful personal mission. You shouldn’t have to start back at the beginning of your bachelor’s degree to find a job to match your skill set—there are lots of ways to use your education and music background, and this episode will cover many of them.

As music educators, so much of what we tend to focus on stems from ensemble performances, sometimes neglecting what music education can and should be for our students in the process. We’ve measured ourselves by concert performances and adjudicators scores instead of what we should be focused on: creating passionate musicians.

How do we make students show up, do the work, and follow through? What’s the difference between being special and being significant? How can we get back to loving our work, when our work feels so different from what we wanted to get into? How can we be more resilient?

Let’s talk about the elephant in the virtual classroom: student engagement. We’ve heard about students quitting music for a variety of reasons, but the truth is if they are still loving music then they will either not quit, or if they do, they will come back.

Just as the times are so different right now, we have to flip things on their head and talk about the other side of things. In this episode, we’re going to talk about some counter-intuitive approaches to battling those feelings of anxiety, stress, and burnout that you may be experiencing.

This episode is all about your students. As much as we, as teachers, need help and advice, I think we can agree our students need help too. How can we create a culture around our music program, no matter what the situation looks like?

In this episode, I am so pleased to bring on a district fine arts administrator with a long career in music education, arranging, and composition. Pete Hazzard is passionate about helping music teachers (and all teachers) really learn how to better collaborate and communicate. We're going to share some tips for how to work more effectively within your schools, how to build rapport with your co-workers, and all of the many rules you have to follow to keep students safe.