My guest this week is Gavin Tabone, an elementary music teacher who has created an after-school choir that has received world-wide acclaim. All of our groups, choir or otherwise, could benefit from a little bit of this kind of magic, right? As your group gets more attention, you are establishing your own advocacy platform. Everyone loves being on the winning team that gets all the love. And in this episode, Gavin is going to tell us how to get it.

Our guest this episode is Wendy Brentnall-Wood, author of the book "Music School Success." Whether you're running a music school or teaching a few lessons on the side, we have tips for you. We’ll share ideas for how to recruit ideal students, stay organized, get paid, stay on the good side of the IRS, and more.

Have you ever wished you could just wave a magic wand and have someone give you everything you’ve ever wanted for your music program? What would you ask for? What would you do? If resources weren’t an issue...what could you do? In this episode, we talk about how to make your dreams a reality. To help me cover the ground between advocacy, PR, and business management, I’ve brought in an expert on all of the above, Tiffany Kerns, executive director of the CMA Foundation.

Every music teacher I’ve ever met has had a horrible-day experience where they thought something like: I love my career but I hate my job. I love my students, but I hate teaching. I love music, but my administration is driving me crazy. Today my guest is Leslie Moffat, author of "I Love My Job But It’s Killing Me." We discuss how you can shift your life and your teaching to create a better experience for yourself, and for your students. Best of all, it’s simpler than you think.

Performing in an honor band is a wonderful adventure. While every student should experience the joy of collaborating with a new group of musicians in this way, several barriers, including travel, can prevent them from doing so. Until now. Learn how your students can participate in a virtual honor band, entirely free of charge!

Burnout is a popular online topic in music education today. In this episode, instead of offering suggestions on how to avoid burnout, I offer some solid tips on how to make sure you won’t want to come back to teaching next year.

Years ago I did some survey work to discover the biggest cause of stress in the lives of music educators. The answer? Funding. One way to get funding is to apply for awards. Joining us this week is my friend Juliana Lee, who actually designed the award application for Give a Note. Juliana shares ideas on what makes a winning application and describes common mistakes to avoid.

This week my guest is Jason Heath, host of Contrabass Conversations podcast. We touch on hobbies, failures, successes, how to keep energized in your career, and many other topics. For me, however, this episode all came down to one lesson: you get to create your own life.

This week Dale Duncan shares successful classroom management strategies he has discovered over more than 20 years of experience as a choral director. You may know Dale as “Mr. D” from “In the Middle with Mr. D.” He is also a 2018 Top 25 GRAMMY Music Educator Award finalist and the creator of the S-Cubed sight-singing program.

Can we practice some of the same concepts that minimalist gurus teach, both in our classrooms and in our lives? If we can, how could our practice as educators improve? What areas should look at first for minimizing? To help, I asked my friend Paige Bell (host of the Simple Music Teaching blog) to chat with me about becoming a minimalist music teacher, which is a passion we share.