I used to think becoming a music teacher meant becoming the person at the center of the room: confident, commanding, comfortable with everyone watching. The problem was, that never fully felt like me. For years, I thought something was wrong with that. This post is about discovering that teaching does not have to look only one way and neither does leadership.

In Part 2 of the “My Students Aren’t Wrong” series, I explore a question that has puzzled me for years: Why do some music education students seem more interested in conducting ensembles than working with children? I argue that students are responding logically to the systems they experienced. When musical value appears to come primarily from the conductor, it makes sense that students would aspire to become that person. But what happens when classrooms distribute value through creativity, participation, and shared music-making instead?

We often debate how many students participate in school music, but what if we’re asking the wrong question? Instead of focusing on percentages, this post explores a deeper idea: can we actually name a student who wouldn’t benefit from music? While many students don’t fit traditional ensembles, it’s hard to imagine anyone who wouldn’t benefit from creating, expressing, or connecting through music in some way.

School music often centers on large ensembles, but that model represents only a small slice of how humans have historically made music. This article explores how participatory traditions—singing, improvising, and playing in small groups—shaped music for centuries, and why modern band reconnects classrooms with these deeper roots of human music-making. 

This article examines a growing tension in school music programs: whether expanding student participation should be addressed by hiring more music teachers or by redesigning how teachers’ roles and instructional time are structured. It argues that meaningful access depends on aligning staffing and instructional design around participation, flexibility, and long-term educational sustainability.

What if the problem in music education is not that students do not value music, but that our programs are not built for the students we have? This article challenges the traditional belief that advocacy is essential for music education’s survival and asks a deeper question about why advocacy is needed in the first place. Explore a bold argument that shifts the focus from changing students to transforming the system so music can speak for itself.