Veteran band director and wellness advocate Lesley Moffat joins Alan and Steve to talk honestly about loving your job so much it starts to break your body—and what to do before (or after) you hit that wall. She shares her journey from 14 prescriptions, surgeries, and constant pain to a healthier, sustainable version of the same career, including the moment she realized, “I love my job, but it’s killing me.” From there, we dig into practical ways K–12 music teachers can set boundaries without feeling selfish, rethink pep bands, rehearsals, and extra events, and build “first push-up”–sized wellness habits that actually fit real school schedules. Along the way, Lesley offers concrete ideas for communicating limits to students and families, using tools like AI and boosters to offload busywork, and modeling a version of music teaching that’s excellent for kids and survivable for adults.
Links & Resources
- Books by Lesley Moffat
- M Powered Music Educator Academy
- Band Director Boot Camp Podcast
About Lesley Moffat
Lesley Moffat 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 be successful in the world.
Following multiple serious illnesses and surgeries, Lesley had to completely transform her life at the age of fifty-one to prevent her health from continuing to decline. Using her body as a laboratory while desperately searching for cures from doctor after doctor, she became fed up with traditional band-aid approaches to treating symptoms, finding she just ended up sick again and again.
Now healthier than she was in her thirties, Lesley’s ready to share her secrets of success with a larger audience. A teacher at heart, she has designed a program to help women who find themselves chronically sick due to excess stress and exhaustion to reclaim their health so they can reclaim their lives. In the same way that she’s designed lessons to engage every kind of learner for the thirty-plus years she’s been a teacher, she is able to create individualized plans that meet the specific goals of each client on their path to a healthier and happier life.
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.
Lesley lives in 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.
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