Music education programs stand to gain important benefits from the collaborative work of performing musicians with specialist music teachers and classroom teachers. To be effective, performers and composers must have their knowledge and skills for education cultivated within the context of their essential identities as musicians. Given opportunities to develop standards of excellent practice under the mentorship of experienced professionals, performers and composers may become active participants in school-community networks that enlarge the profile of music in schools and institutionalize high-quality programs of music learning for children. In this article, the author discusses general principles, which can offer guidelines for the knowledge that musicians may draw on to be effective in a variety of educational contexts. (Contains 20 notes.)