Lesley Moffat | Band Director | Busy Mom | Author | Coach Being a music educator is rewarding…and exhausting! Our work is never done, and in light of the massive upheaval due to the pandemic and worldwide shutdown of schools, music education is changing by the minute and we can either figure it out or freak out. Finding enough hours in the day to meet our students’ needs leaves us drained – and the added stress, anxiety, and mental fatigue that comes with shifting so much of what we do to online learning makes it hard to do day after day. I remember how hard it was to figure out a new normal after 9/11. It was my 14th year of teaching and I had three young kids – one in daycare, one in elementary school, and one in middle school – and I was teaching high school. In order to keep his job, my husband had to transfer to an office that made his commute three hours (on a good day). I felt like a single mom to my own kids and 300 teenagers. Work-life balance seemed like the furthest thing from reality that ever existed. It was so hard – and I didn’t know how to navigate all those added responsibilities in a healthy way. That lead me to physical and mental exhaustion that almost caused me to retire from the job I dearly loved just so I could stay healthy. But lucky for me, I decided I loved my job too much to surrender. In the 32 years I’ve spent as a busy music teaching mom, I’ve learned a few things that I wish I’d known all those years ago. It could have saved me a LOT of time and energy that I put toward things that didn’t always pay off. So I wrote a book to share those strategies. What I’ve found since writing my books is that the music teachers who use the books as a lesson plan for their own personal and professional growth are also experiencing the joy that comes with being able to build a successful program without the burnout.