Professional Learning · Speaking · Beginner Band Support
Professional Learning & Speaking
From a real-life neurospicy educator who understands the joy, complexity, and beautiful chaos of making music work for everyone in the room.
For Music Education Programs
These are the conversations future educators need before they meet real classrooms. Book a single visit or a short series, virtually or in person. Each session is practical, direct, and grounded in 25 years of K–12 music teaching across rural and urban school boards.
Virtual or in person · Single visit or short series
View the Five SessionsAvailable for Booking
These sessions can be booked for university music education classes, conference breakouts, professional learning days, school divisions, or smaller workshops. The format and emphasis are adapted to the audience while keeping the practical, honest, classroom-grounded approach.
A practical session that turns Alberta’s Instrumental Music 7–9 Program of Studies from a dense curriculum document into a useful roadmap for planning, teaching, rehearsing, and assessing.
Alberta’s Instrumental Music curriculum contains strong ideas, but translating broad outcomes into the daily reality of a band room can be overwhelming. What does an outcome actually look like in rehearsal? Where does it fit across the year? How can teachers build a program that is musically meaningful, developmentally appropriate, and realistic within limited rehearsal time?
Drawing from Sarah’s Curriculum Companion to the Instrumental Music 7–9 Alberta Program of Studies, this session breaks the curriculum into practical teaching priorities. Participants will explore how technical skills, musicianship, creativity, performance, reflection, and assessment can work together instead of becoming separate boxes to check.
The session also considers Grade 6 beginner band programs that feed into Grades 7–9, helping teachers build a coherent progression from students’ first sounds through more independent ensemble playing. Participants will leave with clear ways to connect curriculum outcomes to repertoire, rehearsal routines, assessment, and long-range planning.
Alberta band teachers, Grade 6 beginner band teachers, junior high music educators, new band teachers, school divisions, music education conferences, and teachers revising their program plans or assessment practices.
Alberta’s Instrumental Music 7–9 Program of Studies, Grade 6–9 skill progression, long-range planning, rehearsal design, repertoire connections, assessment, student-friendly outcomes, scope and sequence, and practical curriculum implementation.
Participants receive a one-page curriculum overview they can use immediately, with additional companion resources available for those who want a complete planning and assessment system.
Email Sarah About This SessionA practical beginner band session about helping students build confidence, resilience, and independence by normalizing mistakes, celebrating progress, and creating systems that support successful risk-taking from the very beginning.
Beginner band is messy, loud, exciting, and full of opportunities to make mistakes. Before students can create beautiful sounds, they need permission to squeak, miss notes, lose their place, try again, and discover that an imperfect attempt is evidence of learning—not proof that they “aren’t musical.”
In this session, Sarah shares practical ways to establish a growth-mindset culture before students ever put instruments in their hands. Participants will examine how language, routines, instrument selection, family communication, progress tracking, and classroom systems can reduce fear of failure and help young musicians become resilient problem-solvers.
The goal is not to lower expectations. It is to create the conditions students need to take healthy risks, respond to feedback, build independence, and keep going when learning feels difficult.
Beginner band teachers, elementary and junior high music teachers, new band teachers, music education conferences, professional learning days, and teachers rebuilding or rethinking their beginner band programs.
Growth mindset, productive failure, beginner band setup, instrument selection, first sounds, resilience, student independence, parent communication, progress tracking, classroom culture, and support for students with additional needs.
A practical session about instrument selection, accessible notation, and identifying the barriers underneath behaviour—including reading overload, executive functioning demands, sensory overwhelm, anxiety, and fear of failure.
Sometimes it’s not the kid—it’s the system. Many behaviours we interpret as defiance, laziness, inattention, or lack of care are actually signs that a student has encountered a barrier they do not yet have the tools to navigate.
Music classrooms place enormous demands on working memory, reading, listening, motor coordination, emotional regulation, sensory processing, and executive functioning—all at the same time. This session helps educators look beneath the behaviour, identify what is getting in the way, and make targeted changes that preserve high expectations while making success more accessible.
Participants will explore practical supports including modified notation, learning sheets, visual routines, predictable rehearsal structures, reduced cognitive load, meaningful choices, sensory supports, and systems that build student independence. The session also introduces assigning instruments through the lens of diagnosis, considering how individual learning, sensory, and physical needs may affect instrument fit. The focus is on realistic changes educators can use immediately in busy music classrooms.
Music educators, band teachers, elementary music teachers, inclusive education teams, school leaders, convention sessions, professional learning days, and teachers working with complex classrooms.
Access barriers, behaviour as communication, modified notation, learning sheets, executive functioning, predictable routines, sensory needs, anxiety, instrument assignment through the lens of diagnosis, Universal Design for Learning, cognitive load, student independence, and classroom systems.
Available in two formats: In the one-hour lecture-style session, Sarah demonstrates how to adapt printed music so students with dyslexia can read it more easily, along with practical strategies for removing other common barriers. In the two-hour interactive workshop, participants should bring their own device and will have guided working time to try the process themselves by creating adapted music parts and learning sheets for their own students.
Email Sarah About This SessionA practical and personal session exploring neurodiversity in education, the hidden costs of masking and “coping,” and what it can look like for neurodivergent educators to move from surviving toward a more sustainable way of teaching.
Teaching asks educators to manage constant noise, interruptions, changing expectations, competing priorities, emotional labour, and a workload that rarely fits neatly inside the school day. For educators with autism, ADHD, or other neurodivergent ways of thinking, those demands can create both remarkable strengths and very real challenges.
Grounded in Sarah’s lived experience as an educator with autism and ADHD, this session explores what neurodiversity can look like in the adults working inside schools. It examines the hidden labour of masking, the difference between appearing to cope and actually being supported, and the systems educators often build quietly just to keep functioning.
Participants will reflect on organization, sensory needs, executive functioning, communication, creativity, burnout, and the value of supportive professional relationships. The session offers practical strategies for building sustainable routines while also inviting schools and leaders to consider how workplace culture can make it safer for neurodivergent educators to ask for what they need.
Teachers, school leaders, music educators, convention sessions, inclusion-focused professional learning, staff wellness conversations, and neurodivergent educators seeking practical validation and support.
Neurodiversity, autism and ADHD in educators, masking, burnout, coping versus thriving, sensory needs, executive functioning, routines, organization, creativity, support networks, and school culture.
A realistic first-year beginner band sequence—from instrument selection and first sounds to sectionals and a functioning full ensemble.
Beginning band is not one moment when students receive instruments and start playing together. It is a carefully built sequence of small wins, clear routines, and increasingly complex ensemble experiences.
Sarah walks participants through the first-year arc: an instrument petting zoo, thoughtful instrument selection, Squeak & Squawk, split woodwind and brass instruction, sectionals, and the transition into full ensemble. Each stage is designed to protect early confidence while building the independence students need later.
Participants leave with a practical framework for pacing the year, teaching first sounds, managing mixed readiness, communicating with families, and creating early performances that feel successful without pretending the first year is polished or predictable.
Future music educators, beginning band teachers, elementary and junior high music teachers, new band teachers, conference sessions, and school divisions building or reviewing beginner band programs.
Instrument petting zoo, instrument selection, first sounds, split woodwind and brass instruction, sectionals, full ensemble transition, pacing, early wins, family communication, and first-year performance planning.
Booking Details
Why Sarah
With 25 years of K–12 music teaching experience, Sarah brings practical, honest, neuro-affirming learning grounded in the realities of music classrooms. Sessions are adapted to the audience so participants leave with ideas they can actually use.
Rates
Suggested honorarium: $300 CAD per session
It is important to Sarah that future educators get to have these conversations. If your budget is limited, please reach out—she is happy to work with you on the timing, format, and cost.
Bring Sarah to Your Event
Sessions can be adapted for music educators, school divisions, convention audiences, professional learning days, and smaller mentorship-style workshops.
Email Sarah About Speaking