I am curious as to how much sleep music teachers (even current Music Ed majors) get, particularly K-12 music teachers, as I have heard some pretty impressive numbers.

Hi everyone. I have been teaching private music lessons at a shop for five years. Next week is my last week. I live 1-1.5 hours away as of last year, and the drive has been getting to me. It’s also the lack or organization by the shop when it comes to scheduling and providing usable equipment to teachers. It’s a mess, but I still love that place, which is why this decision has been so hard for me. Anyways, I told all of my students this week that next week will be our last lesson. It was really hard. I held back many tears and I fear that there will be some next week. I’ve had these students for years and it feels so hard to say goodbye to them. How can I make sure they all have a great last lesson? Would it be weird to write some of my longest students little letters saying how much I’ve enjoyed helping them begin their musical journey or something along the lines of that? I’ve never ever left a job like this. Any advice is much appreciated.

My band is good and I want to push them out of their comfort zone. I know they like to get better and play challenging stuff. However, I’m a little worried I may have pushed them a smidge too far.

One of my trumpet players has never humbled himself, but today he told me after school that he’s worried about playing two songs back to back: one of them has him playing for most of the song (it’s definitely an endurance piece) while the other song he’s resting quite a bit but it tests his range when he does play. I reassured him that he definitely has the chops, but he believes that playing these songs, in either order, will burn him out and he won’t be able to finish the concert repertoire.

He’s risen to challenges before, but it definitely caught me off guard to hear him throw up a white flag (he’s never done this), so it’s made me pause and wonder if I’m giving them too much or setting them up for failure. We only have 6 weeks to pull it together so I definitely need to decide quickly if I need to switch to something easier.

Has anyone ever been in this position? Would you:
-switch songs?
-look for opportunities in the music to have him rest or play down an octave, where applicable?
-keep the course and let them try their best

(This is only my second year)

I'm halfway through my first semester of Music Ed in undergrad. It's been a complicated experience! I love it, I'm exhausted by it, I'm overwhelmed and sometimes can't stand the idea of practicing and other days I just want to lock myself in the practice room for 5 hours.

Something that has been a continuing adjustment for me is the shift of music as a hobby to music as ostensibly my "job" now. It's no longer the thing I do to relax, or do for personal fulfillment in the blank spaces between school-work, this is my duty to work on and improve on and do five days a week, every week.

It's absolutely not sapped my joy of music, if anything I've found so so much more satisfaction and fulfillment in life now that this thing that I love doing can be my full priority. But my relationship with music has definitely changed. I'm wondering what that shift was like for you all, and how did you process it?

Is facilitating 11,25 minute sessions for classes of 10-12 preschoolers with special needs In a day a reasonable ask from an employer?

Any recommendations for music theory classes online/books/workbooks that are good at keeping the lifeline theory journey going?

In this Music Education tutorial, we're going to learn one of the great hits of current Portuguese music: "Saloia" by Nuno Ribeiro! As always, the theme has been adapted to play the melody on the recorder with a very special pedagogical focus: the practical work of COMPOUND TIME SIGNATURE (6/8).

https://youtu.be/4CMlqkAzdxI