“Fighting Burnout in Music Educators”

Friday January 30,2026 at 4:10-5:00 pm

Crismon Room

“The measure of a life is its service.”

 “A great teacher, a leader in every movement for uplifting his fellowmen, a noble type of Christian Manhood, he rendered enduring service to the state and to humanity.”

Sam Houston State Teachers College President Henry Carr Pritchett encouraged students to measure both their academic mastery and their character. Following his passing, faculty sought a quote to honor him. Augusta Lawrence, professor of literature, suggested a line from Mary Raymond Shipman’s short story The Militants. The words were etched into a stained-glass window in Old Main: “The measure of a Life is its Service.” It soon came to be known as the University motto. Take a moment to jump ahead to the year 2066! What is your legacy? What is YOUR service? How do measure it? Here is a checklist to help you take care of yourself along your pathway to excellence.

____ Find a good therapist. Mine is Sue. “Spirituality is a personal journey, connecting with something greater than oneself, seeking meaning, purpose, and a sense of transcendence, beyond the physical world, often involving inner peace, values, and interconnectedness, which can be experienced within or outside of organized religion through nature, art, helping others or practices like meditation.” ---- Susan Daubenbis

____ Run to nature! Hiking. Get out there as soon as you can, as often as you can. “Nature can really revitalize you. It's also very grounding. The earth is very grounding when you're in nature. You know, you're standing in the grass, you, with no shoes or socks. I mean, it's wonderful. That's the best kind of grounding that you can do.” ---- Susan Daubenbis

____ Deep listening by Dean Pertl – Center for Deep Listening https://youtu.be/bDr2S4n0vnw?si=ILbKsGn7gcNGiee7

 ____ Do Something different! Anything! Get out of your own head! I’m tackling string bass with Brian Murphy at MCC. I’m awful, but I love it!!!

 ____ Get organized and stay that way. Mark Manson has for steps:

         Step 1: Write down everything you care about.


         Step 2: Arrange the list from most important to least important. 


         Step 3: Cross out everything but the top 3 things. 


         Step 4: Re-organize everything you do around those three things.

____ Explore Stoicism. What is Stoicism? Tim Ferriss https://youtu.be/A0XxceO4qX0?si=kgrtbZ2P2tgItOCR

____ Go to your doctor often. Be proactive with your health. You have nothing if don’t have your health!

____ SLEEP!

 ____ Fire the critics! Forgive yourself! Breathe! Live! Teach your heart out. You can’t control anyone or anything outside of your teaching domain. But you CAN control everything inside your domain! Power-teach your tail end off! “Everybody wants to feel good, and everybody wants to feel nurtured, and everybody wants to feel entitled to have all of this, and life is, you know, it's like the old saying of life isn't fair. If there wasn't anything more profound than that. Right. Yet we kind of try to look at it in the prism of fairness, of justice, that, you know, whatever bad happens, the good is gonna come. Not necessarily. We must maneuver our way through that. We must really weave our way in and out of that kind of stuff, because think about something like grief.” ---- Susan Daubenbis

 ____ Explore Chi Gong/https://youtu.be/Y88zYo0YlOopq?si=M5oEnzXMjzy4TTLh

____ Explore Meditation https://youtu.be/3sW-hwpmND8?si=JPz2cbF-fbxkgHCI

 ____ Explore Laryngeal Massage https://youtu.be/shxOKRSoYfQ?si=XcNqtYbofNQKxJnI

____ Vagus nerve https://youtu.be/LnV3Q2xIb1U?si=sVABtrEFBT_sQkRo

 ____ Tai Chi https://youtu.be/a1D8w4g0dnM?si=IydLC8Z40bj8xf9z

____ Run to YOUR own music! Not others! YOURS!

____ See my Zen playlist. Create your own.

 “Life is never, ever going to be perfect. You have to just ride the wave. No wave is ever the same. One wave is bigger than the other, one wave is nice and smooth, one wave could be catastrophic. You must be able to learn how to ride the waves. It's like we're all surfers in life. And a surfer never stands on a surfboard 100% of the time and rides the waves. Sometimes they pull off. They got to get back on. They must swim to shore. This is kind of how life is. You know, you know, life is kind of like one big surf.” ---- Susan Daubenbis

____ Beach Boys isolated vocals – visualize your students singing to you?

https://youtu.be/QSFDewh-eN4?si=o_qEctckMGzDFFJA 

“And if you don't fall off the surfboard, you will lose a lot of their creativity. It's when you fall sometimes that your creative juices start to flow. It's when you're at your worst moments, sometimes you're the most creative. The worst moments, you suddenly you develop a creative kind of mindset, and you start writing it down real fast. You know, if you're a musician, you start writing it down real fast. When something happens, think about a songwriters, when something terrible happens, they're inspired. Yes. They're inspired by unrequited love, or, you know, the death of somebody, or the loss of their parent that they never got to forgive them. They're inspired by it. They start writing these most poetic kind of lyrics. I mean, some of the greatest songwriters and some of John McClain. I mean, think about his lyrics are incredible. They're pure poetry.”

_____ Out of great suffering comes great art. Use your suffering to create your art.