What I Wish I Knew as an Early Career Music Teacher

Nobody handed me a roadmap when I started teaching.

I walked into my first classroom with a degree, a lesson plan binder, and absolutely no idea what I was actually in for. I knew how to teach a song. I knew how to run a rehearsal. I knew music.

What I didn't know was everything else. And everything else, it turns out, is most of the job.

I've been thinking about this a lot lately. It shapes every teacher development program I design and every preK–12 consulting partnership I engage in with a school, district or arts organization. After working in arts teacher development for some time, the things that would have changed my early years aren't complicated. They're just rarely taught. So here's what I wish someone had said to me—and what I build in now into all of the work I do.

1. Your program is always making a case for itself, whether you know it or not.

I thought my job was to teach kids music. It was. But I didn't understand that every concert, every class, every hallway conversation with a parent or principal was also, in some way, arguing for whether the arts belonged in my school.

Nobody told me that.

So I taught in a silo. I celebrated wins privately and wondered why I was always fighting for resources, space, and respect. I wasn't playing defense badly. I just didn't know I was playing defense.

Now, the first thing I tell teachers and arts leaders is this: you are an advocate by default. The question is whether you're doing it on purpose. In every program I design and every district I partner with, we work on this early—learning to communicate impact, connecting arts work to school-wide goals, making the case in language that resonates with the superintendent or the school board, not just other music and arts teachers.

2. Your relationships with colleagues are not optional. They are what your program runs on.

I was friendly. I ate lunch in the faculty room sometimes. I thought that counted.

It didn't.

The music room being physically separate from the rest of the building was also, I came to understand, metaphorically true. Arts teachers get cut out of curriculum conversations, school culture decisions, and the informal networks where things actually get decided. Most don't realize it's happening until they're already on the outside.

When budget season comes, when scheduling gets tight, when a new principal arrives with different priorities—your relationships with classroom teachers, administrators, and support staff either hold your program up or leave it exposed. That's not an overstatement. That's just how schools work. This is why I build explicit structures for collaboration and connection into every district I work with, because isolated arts teachers cannot sustain strong arts programs. Full stop.

3. You are allowed to take up space. More than that—it's your job.

This one is uncomfortable. I'll say it anyway.

Early in my career, I made myself small. I didn't ask for what I needed. I said "I'm fine" when I wasn't. I didn't push back when decisions got made about my program without my input. I thought being low-maintenance made me a good colleague. I also thrived on the feedback that I was so “easy to work with.” And there were benefits to that. That reputation helped me get other jobs and hop around as needed.

It was fine, until it wasn’t.

What it actually did was teach everyone around me that my program didn't need much, and that I didn't need a seat at the table.

Arts teachers do this all the time. We're trained by culture and circumstance to be grateful just to be there. And it costs us: resources, influence, and eventually the ability to stay in the work at all. What I know now is that advocating for yourself is not selfish. It's professional. It's how you protect your students, your program, and your own ability to show up next year.

So ask for the storage closet. Request the planning period. Say "I need to be in that meeting." Taking up the space your program deserves is part of the job—not a distraction from it.

If you don’t, who will?

4. Burnout doesn't announce itself.

There was no single moment for me. It was just a slow accumulation of things over time: saying yes to everything, absorbing every ask, running every after-school rehearsal, planning every concert, managing every parent email, and never once asking who was managing me.

By the time I noticed something was wrong, I'd been running on empty for longer than I could account for.

This is the lived reality of music and arts teachers, especially in the first five years. The profession is losing talented, committed educators because of it, and that loss is not abstract. It shows up in students who go years without a consistent arts teacher, in programs that get handed to a long-term substitute, in schools where the arts never quite recover.

It also shows up a ton in my teacher coaching meetings, mentoring conversations, and workshop discussions I facilitate. In fact, every time I talk to a teacher, I hear burnout and career unsustainability.

The impact of this on my work has probably been the greatest out of everything. I don't build teacher sustainability into the work I do as an afterthought. It goes in at the foundation. That means helping teachers recognize their own capacity limits before they hit them, creating peer support structures that actually function, and working with administrators to understand something they often don't: teacher sustainability is a program quality issue, not a personal one.

5. Being a great teacher is necessary, but it’s not enough.

This might be the hardest thing to hear, especially if you're working hard and doing good work.

I was a good teacher. My students made music. My concerts were strong. And I still almost lost my position in a budget cycle because I had no idea how to talk about what I was doing in terms that mattered to the people making the decision.

The arts educators who sustain strong programs over time are the ones who can also communicate data, build community partnerships, connect their work to district priorities, and position themselves as essential to the whole school, not just the music room.

But the good news is that these are learnable skills. They can be taught and reinforced in graduate school (we do this at Longy School of Music!), in induction programs, in group coaching and district-wide teacher development and support programs.

They are not extras. They are (a huge!) part of the job.

And I know all of this can feel overwhelming and a big ask….but you can do this. You are capable.

If you are a teacher, here's the one thing I'd tell you to do this week: find one person in your building who isn't another arts teacher, and have a real conversation with them. Not about scheduling or logistics. About what you're working on and why it matters. That's it. One conversation. Because the relationships that hold your program up don't start in a budget meeting. They start in the hallway, long before you need them.

Cheers to you and all the amazing things you do!