- We have been doing testing at the beginning of the year, having them tryout all mouthpieces. Prior we ask them their top three and give them our recommendation from those three, unless they cannot make a sound on any of them (which happens).
- Percussion has a separate screening and sax is not that popular at our school.
- We've been "promised" like-instrument classes IF we can get them a list before May (right now our classes don't even come close). In order to do this, we will need to visit the elem schools during the day to screen, which means we won't be able to take the instrument with us.
- We haven't decided if I will tell the that day or wait until everyone is screened.
- We check out all instruments.
- Surprisingly, a large number of boys choose flute as one of their top three choices, so the choice between flute and baritone/euphonium won't work
- We do tell them is is the easiest, but it doesn't seem to matter
- We tried switching kids from trumpets who play too low but they still don't want it. They'd rather do poorly on trumpet. The ones that do switch quit at the end of the year, even if they were successful on baritone/euphonium.
In short, after nearly 30 years of teaching, this is the one instrument we can't seem to get kids to play and I've tried just about everything. I have kids who want to play oboe and bassoon over baritone/euphonium.
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