2026 Maine Music Educators Association Conference

Do you have a successful Tri-M chapter at your school? Or maybe you want to start a Tri-M chapter but don't know how to start. Or maybe your school has a chapter, but you're trying to figure out what the students should be doing. This session will be a roundtable discussion of teachers sharing their experience with Tri-M including meeting plans, projects, and activities. Come with your ideas and questions.

I Wish I Knew Then What I Know Now

As music educators, we often dream big for our programs, but turning those dreams into reality requires more than creativity. It requires advocacy. In this session, you’ll learn practical strategies to grow your program by effectively working with administrators and stakeholders, building strong parent partnerships, and inspiring student buy-in. We’ll also explore resourceful fundraising approaches and ways to secure the tools, materials, and support your program deserves. Walk away with an advocacy roadmap so that you can start transforming your wish list into reality.

Transform your teaching! Discover how Critical Race Theory serves as a powerful analytical lens to create inclusive music classrooms. Learn practical strategies for diversifying repertoire, broadening auditions, and amplifying marginalized voices while fostering equity for ALL students across every musical tradition.

Calling all early career music teachers who are in their first five years of teaching! Come get the support and resources you need as you continue to navigate your early years in the profession! Working collaboratively with each other, you will work with your peers through tried-and-true strategies as you apply them to your own teaching situation and students. Come engage in "challenge by choice" as you choose which area(s) of your teaching you wish to create an action plan for so that you can improve your skills in the classroom. Specific areas that this workshop addresses includes classroom management, student engagement, time management skills, lesson planning, adapting to meet the needs of students and teacher assessment. By the end of this workshop, beginning teachers will have developed a plan for immediate actionable steps that they use in their classroom, along with a Google drive of resources that will support their work and goals moving forward.

The transition from MS to HS yields the highest attrition rate across the board… now you’re saying we are adding new graduation requirements AND the school schedule is changing!?! Rob discusses strategies to help combat the never ending list of obstacles we face and help turn them into opportunities.