Most of us who went into music education can name the moment we got hooked. For a lot of band directors it happened on a podium, watching a room full of teenagers suddenly get it and play a phrase like they meant it. What nobody tells you in college is that some of the most important music education work happens far from the podium, in budget meetings, in classroom observations, and in the lobby of a performing arts center at 7 a.m. while someone is hanging two hundred pieces of student artwork.
Andy Markoch knows that work better than almost anyone. Andrew R. Markoch is the Director of Fine Arts and Physical Education for Vance County Schools in Henderson, North Carolina, and this school year marks his 38th in education. He may not stand in front of a band every day anymore, but every day he is making sure that kids in a small, low-income district have access to music, visual art, theatre, and dance. That's not a consolation prize for a former music teacher. That's the whole symphony.
From the Band Room to the Front Office
Like many great arts administrators, Andy started as a band director, and his path through Ohio's band rooms would be familiar to anyone who has chased a teaching job.
He earned his bachelor's degree in music education from the University of Akron in 1988 and landed his first position that fall in Stow. There he was assistant director of the marching band and director of the jazz ensemble. He also had to teach elementary general music, and by his own admission he hated it. (If you're a secondary instrumental teacher who just found "K–5 General Music" on your schedule, take heart. You're in good company, and you'll survive.)
After one year, Andy became director of bands at Wheelersburg. The program had about 35 students when he arrived, and in just two years he grew it to more than 50. Anyone who has tried to build a band program with almost nothing knows that kind of growth doesn't come from a recruiting flyer. It comes from kids telling their friends that band is where the good stuff happens.
Then came the part of the job nobody puts in the college brochure. Andy spent a single year at Medina Highland before a failed school levy led to his position being cut. It's a gut punch many music teachers have felt, and it's part of why he understands funding battles so well today. That reduction in force brought him to Belpre.
Of all his stops, Kenmore was his favorite. He inherited a small, undisciplined group and lit a musical fire in them. One of his first moves was taking the students to a band competition, not to compete but just to watch. That was all it took. They were hooked. By his second year they were competing themselves, and while it was tough, those kids fought hard to improve every single week. He eventually took them to a music festival in New York City, and for many of his students it was the first time they had ever left northeast Ohio. It wasn't the biggest band he ever led, but it may be where he did his best work, and the impact on those kids was enormous. It's a textbook example of how to keep kids in band: give them something worth chasing, then go chase it with them.
While teaching, Andy went back to Akron for a master's degree in educational administration in 2001 and completed principal licensure coursework in 2003. That same year he moved to North Carolina and began his administrative career at Wake Forest High School. From 2007 to 2011 he was the on-site principal of the school's Ninth Grade Center. He guided the center from an academy into a full-fledged school operating inside a comprehensive high school, and later helped move it from an off-site location onto the main campus. Anyone who has taught freshmen knows ninth grade is where students either find their people or get lost. Building a school around that transition takes the same instincts a good band director uses to keep first-year players from quitting in October.
From there, Andy joined Vance County Schools as principal of Northern Vance High School, then moved into district leadership overseeing fine arts. It's a path more music educators are taking, and it raises the question we've explored before about where music fits in during an era of shifting priorities. Andy's answer has been simple: if you want the arts at the table, sometimes you have to be the one pulling up the chair.
The Job Nobody Sees
Here's the part of fine arts administration that never makes the newspaper. Small, rural, and low-income districts rarely get to choose from a deep pool of veteran arts teachers. Positions go to brand-new graduates, to teachers covering subjects outside their specialty, and to educators who are still figuring out classroom management while also trying to teach eighth graders to read a key signature.
Andy doesn't just hire those teachers and hope for the best. He goes into their classrooms, watches them teach, and coaches them to become the best educators they can be. That kind of hands-on support is exactly what we mean when we talk about investing in teachers as the missing link in education. It's also a reminder of how much mentorship in music education matters, especially for new teachers who might be the only arts educator in their building.
And there's a lot of building to cover. Vance County offers music or art in every elementary school, a STEAM-focused elementary academy with both, band, chorus, and art at its traditional middle and high schools, theatre arts at Vance County High School, and a pathway for Early College students to keep playing in the high school band. The district's Center for Innovation even houses video and audio studios and supports a student Music Production Club. For a district serving around 5,000 students, that's a remarkable menu, and it doesn't stay on the menu by accident.
Arts Alive: The Night the Whole County Shows Up
If you want to see Andy's fingerprints on Vance County, go to Arts Alive. Presented by Vance County Schools and the Vance County Public School Foundation since 2017, Arts Alive is the district's annual celebration of student artists, and it has grown into one of the most anticipated nights in Henderson.
The day centers on McGregor Hall, the downtown performing arts center. The afternoon opens with the Heart of the Art gallery in the lobby, where more than 200 pieces of student artwork from pre-K through graduating seniors are displayed. Every medium is welcome: paint, pencil, crayon, collage, sculpture, digital. Culinary arts students cater the gallery with hors d'oeuvres. There are no trophies or rankings; instead, the superintendent's cabinet walks the gallery and chooses one piece that speaks to them, which then hangs at the district office for the following year. Students even design the event's T-shirts, buttons, and performer badges, and Andy has personally presented the winners with framed copies of their designs.
Then comes the talent showcase: singers, actors, instrumentalists, dancers, and ensembles from across the district. The crowd regularly approaches a thousand people, and they don't sit politely. They cheer, clap, and holler for every act. Andy has said that's part of the point: these students deserve recognition, and they deserve to hear it out loud.
He learned how much that live audience matters during the pandemic. In 2021, the district produced a virtual Arts Alive with performers recorded individually. It kept the tradition going, but the kids missed the roar of a real crowd. When the event returned to McGregor Hall in 2022, Andy promised it would feel like a live show again, and it has ever since. If you've ever doubted that parades and community performances matter, one Arts Alive crowd would change your mind.
When the Money Ran Out
Last year, the funding for Arts Alive simply wasn't there. For someone who had poured years into building the event, it was devastating. But instead of letting the arts disappear from the calendar, Andy came up with an alternative plan that still put Vance County's student artists in the spotlight.
This year, funding has been found, and Arts Alive returns this spring with Andy as host. That's a lesson every young director should tuck away: budgets will eventually let you down, and the programs that survive are the ones led by people who refuse to let a funding gap become an arts gap. Andy learned that lesson the hard way back in Ohio when a failed levy cost him his job, and he's spent the decades since making sure students don't pay that price. It's the same spirit behind meeting community needs while nurturing your program, and behind fundraisers that don't suck the life out of you.
A Champion of the Arts, a Musical Garden, and Other Good Ideas
All of that work hasn't gone unnoticed. Andy received the Champion of the Arts Award, a fitting title for someone who has spent his career making sure the arts have a seat at the table. Still, if you ask the people who know him, the recognition he values most is watching a student walk across the McGregor Hall stage or find their own painting hanging in the gallery.
His impact also shows up in unexpected places. At the Center for Innovation, he helped bring to life the Gargoyle Garden, a literal musical garden filled with plant-shaped percussion instruments like bells and xylophones, open to schools and community groups. Imagine a kindergartner discovering that the "flower" in front of them plays a pitch. That's early music education with no worksheet required.
He also serves as the district's Beta Club coordinator (Vance County has been named a National Beta District of Distinction eight years running), sits on the board of the Wake Forest Community Youth Orchestra, and has curated student art exhibits for community events like the Henderson Arts Festival. Wherever there's a chance for a Vance County kid to be seen as an artist, Andy tends to be nearby, usually holding a hammer and a stack of mounting boards.
What Young Music Teachers Can Learn from Andy
If you're early in your career, it's easy to think of district administrators as the people who send emails about inventory deadlines. We've even written about navigating difficult administrators. But Andy is proof of the other kind: the administrator who remembers what it felt like to be a new music teacher and shows up in your classroom to help rather than to judge.
His career also shows that a music education degree can lead in more directions than you'd guess. The skills you build running a rehearsal (planning, listening, adjusting, motivating a room full of different personalities) translate directly into leading schools and districts. And his early years are a reminder that a rough start, whether it's a general music assignment you dread or a pink slip from a failed levy, doesn't define a career. The arts need advocates in the principal's office and the central office just as much as they need great teachers in the band room.
A 38th Year Worth Celebrating
Andy intends to retire, and whenever that day comes, his legacy is already easy to see. It's in the kids from Kenmore who saw New York for the first time, in McGregor Hall every spring, in the student art hanging on district office walls, and in the arts teachers who became better educators because someone took the time to watch them teach.
If you find yourself in Henderson this spring, grab a seat at Arts Alive. Cheer loudly. Andy would want it that way.
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