Music In Our Schools Month® 2026: "United Through Music" Song Bracket

This year the theme for Music In Our Schools Month® (MIOSM®) is "United through Music". I have been doing a "musical March madness"-style song bracket, where students listen to different songs each day and vote on their favorites, for several years now, and for the last several years I've tried to tie the songs into the annual theme NAfME chooses. To connect with this year's theme, I've decided to choose songs that include 2 or more languages, to show how music can connect people across cultures and languages.

The theme of "United through Music" is not new- NAfME is using the same theme as last school year. If you didn't use my song bracket last year, I did an entire playlist of songs that combine two or more musical genres (many of them also from different cultures), which you can see here. I also did an entire playlist of songs focusing on unity/ togetherness in 2023 for their theme that year, "Music Is All of Us", which was a similar theme! If you didn't use my song bracket that year and you'd rather focus on lyrics with themes of unity to connect with this year's theme, you can find that list of songs here.  

As I have done the last few years, I'm going to be setting up google slides files with the songs for each day embedded in the slides so that classes can vote in their homerooms. If you want to see how I organize the logistics so classes can vote every day regardless of whether they have music that day or not, check out my 2021 MIOSM post (and definitely let me know if you have any questions, I'm happy to help). Doing it in slides was such an easy way to have all the songs organized and make it easy for the homeroom teachers to report their class' vote rather than having to email me every day! I don't have the rights to share the song files, but you can make a copy of my slide templates and add the audio files yourself by clicking on the image below (it will automatically ask you if you want to make a copy)- here is a tutorial on setting it up in slides using the templates:

In my song lists each year I try to include songs from different genres and time periods, representing artists of different backgrounds and including different languages, and this year is obviously no different. You'll find a blank slide template in the slides file linked above: I use that to show the lyrics in their original language and in the English translation for parts that are not in English. 

Here are the songs I'll be using in this year's bracket, with the languages included in each song included (in no particular order):

1. El Ritmo by J. Esho (French, Arabic, Spanish)

2. Djapana by Yothu Yindi (English, Yolnu Matha - northern Australia)

3. Con un vezzo all'italiana by Mozart (Italian, French, English)

4. Ojos Asi by Shakira (Spanish, Arabic)

5. Spider by GIMS and DYSTINCT (French, Arabic)

6. Uewo Muite Arukou by Mimy Succar, Nora Suzuki, Tony Succar (Japanese, Spanish)

7. Wanna Be Yours by Violette Wautier (Thai, English)

8. Four Women by Sara Tavares, Chiwoniso, Deborah, and Joy Denalane (Brazilian Portuguese, Shona, French, German)

9. Aaj Ibaadat by Javed Bashir and Shreyas Puranik (Sanskrit, Hindi)

10. Jerusalema Remix by Master KG feat. Burna Boy and Nomcebo (Nigerian pidgin, Zulu, Yoruba, Hausa)

11. Golden by HUNTRIX (Korean, English)

12. Period by YonYon, Taichi Mukai (Korean, Japanese)

13. Nus Nus by Noam Tsuriely (Hebrew, Arabic, English)

14. Girl On Fire + Ala Tabiaty by Alaa Wardi and Nesma Mahgoub (English, Arabic)

15. Aicha by Moe Phoenix (German, French, Arabic)

16. So Far by Habanot Nechama (Hebrew, English)

17. Nah by Marie Bothmer and Lord Esperanza (German, French)

18. Zemër by Dhurata Dora and Soolking (French, Albanian)

19. El Baile del Kkoyaruna by Pascuala Ilbaca y Fauna (Spanish, Quechua)

20. CHANGE by E.SO (Mandarin, English)

21. Mungu Halali by Blinky Bill and Wambura Mitaru (Swahili, English)

22. Libre by Alvaro Soler and Monika Lewczuk (Spanish, Polish)

23. Hitzeman by ZETAK and Oques Grasses (Catalan, Basque)

24. Lathi by Weird Genius and Sara Fajira (Javanese, English)

I'm excited to see how the students respond to this year's playlist, and I'm curious to see which song wins out in the end! What are your plans for Music In Our Schools Month® this year? What are other songs that fit this theme? I'd love to hear more suggestions in the comments below- I'm sure there are plenty more great ones out there. If you're looking for more ideas to use for MIOSM, here are all my posts on the topic.

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Top 10 Posts from 2025

I am so grateful for the opportunity to connect with other music teachers around the globe through my little corner of the internet, and it is such a good feeling when readers connect with something I've written. Each time a new calendar year rolls around, it's so fun to look back and see which of the posts I wrote the past year have been read the most! So we're looking back on 2025 today to see which posts made the top 10 list- have you seen them all?

I'll admit I've bent my own rules a little this year. The last few years I've been feeling sorry for the posts I write at the end of each calendar year because they often don't get the credit they deserve in these rankings since they just came out! So I decided to include any posts written after American Thanksgiving 2024 in the running for the 2025 list, just to give them a fair chance :)

10. Algonquin Water Song

9. Music In Our Schools Month Activities 2025

8. Favorite Songs for Teaching Syncopa

7. "Colors" Theme Elementary Choral Program

6. Team Rhythm Challenge

5. Football Themed Elementary Music Lesson Activities

4. Teaching Rondo Form

3. What To Do With Those Xylophones

2. 3 Ways to Teach Fast and Slow

1. Recorder Videos to Share with Students

Thank you all for reading, interacting with, and supporting this page. Having the opportunity to interact with other music teachers, and the platform to share my thoughts and ideas, has been such an amazing creative outlet and source of encouragement for me! I can't wait to see what 2026 brings us. Happy New Year!

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Music Teacher Planner December 2025

Each new year brings fresh motivation to get organized! I love looking through my planner from the first part of the school year over winter break before refilling it with fresh blank pages for the spring! Today you're coming with me to look through my planner from the first few months of the school year before we start fresh in January.

I actually showed the first few weeks of the school year in a separate video this fall. Here are my monthly and weekly planner pages from the end of August through the end of September:

And then here are the rest of the weekly and monthly pages through the end of December 2025, including a custom page I made to use over break! This is one of the things I love about using a printable planner like this- I can throw in different pages whenever I want to without feeling like I'm wasting anything and make it tailored to my needs.

If you're looking to get more organize in 2026 I've got you covered! This is the planner format I use, and you can see all of the Organized Chaos Planners designed specifically for music teachers here as well. If you have any questions about how I use my planner etc, please leave a comment and I'll be happy to help!

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"Jingle Bells" in Music Class and Winter Concerts

If you're still using Jingle Bells in your music class, you're missing out. 

In case you haven't heard, the song "Jingle Bells" was written for a minstrel show. And as prevalent as the song has somehow become all over the world since it was likely first performed in 1857, it's long past time we moved on. I know how hard it can be to change old habits, so in this post I've compiled some easy ways to replace the song regardless of what you're using it for in your music lessons.

1. Fun Children's Songs About Jingle Bells 

I think for most people, Jingle Bells is just a fun, easy song that feels "festive" without being directly connected to a holiday (although let's be honest, whether it was written for it or not, everyone associates the song with Christmas), and it's a fun song to break out the jingle bells with the little ones and sing with gusto! If that's what you're looking for, I'd venture to say these 2 songs are far superior: Jingle Jangle Everybody Sing by Charissa Duncanson, and Jingle All the Way by Stephanie Leavell. They're both written by music teachers for young children and they have both been huge hits with my students!

The great thing is both of these songs work great for common concepts we are often practicing in general music lessons:

• Steady beat
• Same and different sections/ A and B sections/ form
• Opportunities for composition/ improvisation
• Fast/ slow, loud/ quiet

2. Easy Beginning Instrumental Songs

"Jingle Bells" is a common song for beginning band and orchestra winter concerts or even for classroom instruments like recorder and orff ensemble, but there are so many better options out there this one should not be hard to replace. "We Will Rock You" is similar in the sense that the rhythm can be easily simplified, it has a limited range, and it's instantly recognizable so it feels legit (and you can find lots of arrangements for beginning band, beginning orchestra, recorder play-alongs, etc). "Mary Had a Little Lamb" and "Twinkle Twinkle" are other simple melodies that can swap in as another well-known tune.

For specifically wintery songs, it's easy to search by level on most sheet music sites and even TeachersPayTeachers to find some great pieces that fit the bill and will honestly be more appealing to upper elementary students who tend to find songs like "Jingle Bells" to be a little childish. 

If you haven't checked out the sheet music available on TPT, I think you'll be surprised at how much you can get for the price, and there is a lot of great quality literature available that is developmentally appropriate for every stage of learning because there are so many written by beginning instrumental teachers! Here are just a few examples:

Winter Music Bundle for Beginning Band by Classroom Composers

Beginning Orchestra Winter Concert Bundle by Motivational Music Classroom

"Winter's Here" Recorder Orff Song by Hutzel House of Music

3. Sing-Along Songs

I've written extensively about how I am working to continue teaching students about holidays, which are an important part of cultures around the world, while avoiding students feeling excluded in the process as much as I can. Jingle Bells is commonly used in sing-alongs as a non-religious holiday song, but obviously based on its racist origins doesn't fit the bill for non-exclusionary. For a full list of songs I have been using for many years now in my sing-along including songs for Diwali, Hanukkah, Christmas, Kwanzaa, Lunar New Year, and Eid, with all the fun movement and other activities I include with the songs, head to this post. Another great idea that uses a simple prop (cups) with a wintery, festive, non-religious song that would be great for a sing-along is this simplified cup routine for Sleigh Ride:

I hope this helps provide some concrete suggestions for ways we can remove a problematic song from our music classrooms and programs while injecting more fun music that is engaging, perfect for the winter season, and accessible for beginners and young learners! If you want to see all of the music lessons that I teach in the month of December for every grade K-6 general music lessons, here is my full curriculum (also available in individual months and grade levels). What else is stopping you from removing the song from your music lessons and programs? If you have other ways you use this song that I can help find a replacement for, please send me an email or leave a comment and I'd be happy to help!

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