Aug 15 2023 16 mins
This week, Angela interviews author, band director, speaker, and mom: Lesley Moffat! In this episode, Lesley shares how she transitioned from 14 medications to none, how she started a podcast, wrote two books, and founded her MPowered Educator Academy. Moffat also delves into life – work balance and envisioning your own flap copy! You will LOVE this episode!
Prior to writing Love the Job, Lose the Stress, Lesley Moffat’s story of overcoming the myriad of health issues she’d faced for decades as a high school band director and wrote about in the book I Love My Job but It’s Killing Me: The Teacher’s Guide to Conquering Chronic Stress and Sickness resonated with teachers all over the world.
Lesley considers it a personal triumph to have overcome personal health issues that were the result of being an exhausted and worn-out band director who was on the verge of walking away from the career she loved. The responsibilities, time, and energy it took to run her music program left her struggling to balance her career with her family life. In order to stay in the job without continuing to struggle with burning the candle at both ends, she set out to figure out how she could be both the mom and badass band director she’d always dreamed of being.
Through the course of her own research, what she learned through trial and error, activities she’s used in teaching more than 30,000 classes, and her experience with how students best learn, she has created a simple yet brilliant protocol that has the potential to change how teachers teach and students learn.
Lesley has worked with thousands of people, helping them not only achieve musical goals (including repeated performances at Carnegie Hall, Disney Theme Parks, Royal Caribbean cruise ships, and competitions and festivals all over the US and Canada), but also teaching them how to develop the long-term life skills they need to help them achieve their goals.
Lesley has been a presenter at the National Association for Music Education (NAfME) and WMEA Conferences, served on the board for the Mount Pilchuck Music Educators Association, and has been an adjudicator and guest conductor in the Pacific Northwest and is a frequent guest on education and music education podcasts and webinars, sharing strategies from her personal and professional struggles and triumphs.
Lesley lives in the same Seattle suburb where she’s taught for most of her career, developing relationships with students and their families as their teacher and also as a fellow member of the same community.
After completing her undergraduate degree at Indiana University, she returned to her roots and moved back to the Pacific Northwest, where she and her husband, George, raised their three daughters, all of whom were students in her high school band program. Fun fact: Lesley, George, all three of their daughters, and Lesley’s dad have performed at Carnegie Hall.
Check out more from Lesley Moffat Here: