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.
After Hours: Conversations for Music Educators
There Was No Band Program For 20 Years. Then This Educator Restarted It.
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Amro Music
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Season 7
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Episode 4
This week Nick Averwater talks with Jacob Abbott, Performing Arts Director at Dresden High School in Dresden, TN, which is a town of around 3,000 people in Northwest Tennessee, and is just over 100 miles from both Memphis and Nashville.
Jacob has been named to the 2025 Yamaha 40 Under 40 list of music educators, and in this conversation he'll tell us about restarting the school's band program after 20 years, with the support of the school district and the community.
Our conversation was recorded in February, 2025.