Determining Which Instrument Works Best For Each Student Artwork

After Hours: Conversations for Music Educators

After Hours: Conversations for Music Educators is a music education podcast from Amro Music Stores, Inc. Our After Hours podcast host, Nick Averwater, facilitates engaging conversations each week with band directors, private music teachers, general music educators, orchestra directors, and other music industry professionals just like you. Each podcast guest shares practical advice on things like classroom management in your band program, placing beginners on instruments, band and orchestra recruitment strategies, band boosters, fundraising, and more. The goal of After Hours is to provide a podcast for band directors, orchestra directors, and music educators with strategies for both "on-podium" and “off-podium” skills that can help create a school music program that you can be proud of. If you can't find what you're looking for in our current episodes, we'd love to hear from you! Send us an email with questions or topics you'd like to see addressed in the podcast.

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After Hours: Conversations for Music Educators

Determining Which Instrument Works Best For Each Student

July 14, 2025 • Amro Music • Season 6 • Episode 21

We're posting this on Monday, July 14, 2025. It's the third in a series of six episodes designed to help you get ready for the new school year. We'll have new episodes in this back to school series this Thursday, July 17th, as well as next Monday and Thursday, July 21st and 24th.

This week we're discussing placing beginner students with the right instrument as Nick Averwater talks with Sloane Feeley from Woodland Middle School in Brentwood, TN, a city of 45,000 located just south of Nashville, Spencer Nesvick from Houston Middle School in Germantown, TN, a city of 41,000 just east of Memphis, and David Burkhalter from Heber Springs Middle School in Heber Springs, AR, a town of 7,000 located 50 miles north of Little Rock.

Our conversation was recorded June 30, 2025. We've broken it up into two episodes, and this is part one.