Be honest: you had a dream job in mind when you graduated with your music education degree. Maybe you had your heart set on leading a major national marching program as a head director. Maybe you wanted to teach beginning strings. Unfortunately, your ideal position may not have been available when you did a job search. You may have ended up teaching elementary music.

Most music education degrees come with a K-12 teaching certificate, but that doesn’t mean you feel comfortable with the K-4 kids. Most of us focused on secondary school in college, and when confronted with the realities of teaching elementary music we have to make some adjustments. I’ve lived this – I play French Horn and focused on secondary instrumental music in school, but now teach elementary music.

In this episode, I talk with master elementary music teacher David Row about everything you need to know to teach elementary music. We go over how to get started, how to shape a curriculum for elementary kids, how to build lesson plans, and how to handle classroom management.