Uplevel U: Music's 2025 In Review, But What’s Next for 2026?

Music Room
6 days ago
5 min read

The Courses Released in 2025

Expanding Uplevel U: Music’s Reach in 2026

What's Next for Uplevel U: Music in 2026?

What Courses Are In the Works for 2026?

Uplevel U: Music had a challenging year. The first five months saw growth that matched the projected timetable for course and resource expansion.

But June saw a tragic setback. Owner and Creator of Music Room and Uplevel U: Music lost her husband very suddenly. While generally her response to grief is to push herself headfirst into work, the reality is that logistics that come with new widowhood have to come first. And when one is grieving a spouse, creative endeavors can be challenging, especially when one understands that their normally bubbly and brilliant energy on camera can appear changed from adversity like this.

This led to a 3-month delay in course releases. The next projected course to be released was the Grades K-8 Music Curriculum course, which was set to be released between October and November, but should be released by the end of January.

The Courses Released in 2025

One of the courses that was released this past year was “My Orchestra Doesn’t Squeak: Perfect String Technique by Middle School”. Based on decades of research and refinement, Kay breaks down, lesson by lesson, the teaching methods for orchestral string technique, which the intention of making it easy, fun, and to encourage lasting habits.

The next, “Character Development and Stage Presence for Theater Educators”, finally breaks Uplevel U: Music into the theater education space! With many ways to help teachers encourage memorable and applicable ways to develop characters of many types, and for all levels, this course is incredibly helpful.

Next, “Vocal Pedagogy for Non-Voice Majors” helps the teacher that was primarily trained for band or orchestra. College prep programs can only do a little to help round out the instrumental teacher for other roles in music education. This course is the answer for the instrumental teacher that must teach in the general music and choral setting. It breaks down many of the vocal challenges and issues that young singers face when developing their vocal skills, and how teachers can address them safely and successfully.

Lastly, “Teaching Students to Integrate Singing and Expression” takes the previous two course, which was focused on technique, and character development in acting, and helps teachers pull it all together for expression in specifically singing, which can be very challenging.

Addition of Free and Low-Cost Resources

Uplevel U: Music had a goal of bringing small teaching resources to the teacher that is not quite ready to commit to a full course. Each new resource starts as a free one, eventually costing a minimal amount. The resources released in 2025 were:

The Metronome Game
Teaching Your Students to Use Fakebooks and Lead Sheets
Critical Listening in the General Music Classroom
Helping Students to Love and Appreciate Scales
The Audience Etiquette Skit

Each resource comes with an explanation video and materials needed to teach each topic. Visit https://www.musicroombuffalo.com/uplevelu-musicprograms and scroll down to the resource section to check them out and download!

Expanding Uplevel U: Music’s Reach in 2026

Any important project can be worth its weight in gold and platinum, but its worth is nothing unless people know about it. Uplevel U: Music continues its state-by-state performing arts educator outreach program. To date, thousands of music educators around the United States have received up to two emails telling them briefly what Uplevel U: Music is and how it can help them. While the method is indeed cold outreach, months of research and planning have helped each detail of the method to be as ethical, non-intrusive and as helpful as possible.

When teachers receive this email (and possibly one follow-up), they are offered the link to an Interactive Catalog. The catalog is a live document that is updated whenever there is something new added to Uplevel U: Music. The catalog has helpful links, descriptions, objectives and the base price of each course. Teachers are told not to download it, but rather to bookmark it, so that each time it is viewed, it is the most current version.

Since Uplevel U: Music is an online platform itself, it only makes sense that its presence online be strengthened first. We added content to our Blog, which generally releases an article about twice a month. The topics support hot issues in music education, and information related to courses that will be released soon. Working alongside the blog is a podcast that is simply called the Uplevel U: Music podcast, which releases an episode on the blog’s “off weeks”. The addition of the podcast in Karen (Kay) Janiszewski’s own voice is a great way for future course participants to get a feel for the individual that does the majority of instruction at this time.

Social media presence has also strengthened. The Music Room / Uplevel U: Music Facebook Page posts news relevant to the thriving music studio, which brings the studio to life online, shows credibility of the diverse instruction that Mrs. Janiszewski does each day and helps showcase her program as a vibrant community. For those that prefer to keep the news of Uplevel U: Music separate, the Uplevel U: Music Facebook Group is updated a few times a week with blog and podcast updates, new course releases and promotions, and other relevant bits and bites related to music and performing arts PD.

Music Room's logo that projects the same ideology into Uplevel U: Music

What's Next for Uplevel U: Music in 2026?

Next year for Uplevel U: Music is looking like an exciting year. The marketing project is in full swing again after the holidays, with thousands of teachers in line to receive the emails offering the interactive catalog.

The blog and podcast will be updated as usual, and updates will continue on Facebook and Instagram. Additional ideas will be considered as the funds become available. Fortunately, now that the marketing systems are in place, more time and energy can be allocated to what Uplevel U: Music is all about: the courses.

What Courses Are In the Works for 2026?

If all stays on track, by mid-year 2026, Phase 1 of course release will be complete. More courses that are related to general music, improvisation, theater and dance will be released. The total number of courses to complete this phase is five.

Plans for more free and low-cost resources are definitely in the works on the miscellaneous topics that we have released so far. At least three more resources are planned.

Does this mean content development ends here? Not at all. Kay is taking suggestions for other course and resource topics for the second phase, which would begin in 2027. Once all planned courses and resources are released, the focus will shift to marketing to help Uplevel U: Music to gain more traction among performing arts teachers nationwide, and worldwide.

So What Can We Really Look Forward To?

The goal for 2026 is to regain traction after a very turbulent 2025, first and foremost. Finishing Phase 1’s release plans and furthering outreach are already underway. If you’re reading this, you can help us with this in mere seconds! Start with the Interactive Catalog and share it with your colleagues. Get into conversations about how worthwhile professional development from your pajamas, in bed, on your phone, while eating snacks is going to be. Help us with our goal of making Uplevel U: Music the #1 go-to strategy for professional development among all performing arts teachers all around the world!