By Ben Dumbauld, Research Associate and Project Manager The history of popular music is rarely a smooth affair–it is punctuated by events that, seemingly out of the blue, forever demand recognition by musicians, audiences, and the music industry as a whole. The Beatles on the Ed Sullivan Show. Woodstock. MTV’s first broadcast. Yet, not all such seminal events in music are …
The award-winning documentary RUMBLE: The Indians Who Rocked the World tells the story of a profound, essential, and, until now, missing chapter in the history of American music: the Indigenous influence. The Rock and Roll Forever Foundation is helping bring that story to American classrooms with five, standards-aligned RUMBLE lesson plans. At the 2018 SXSWEdu conference in Austin, Texas, the …
NEW YORK, May 19, 2017-Steven Van Zandt’s Rock and Roll Forever Foundation and the New Jersey School Boards Association today announced a collaboration to provide teachers and administrators in New Jersey’s public school districts with access to arts-based, STEAM-aligned professional development and a wealth of educational materials, free of charge. Even though the announcement comes only days after Van Zandt …
On Sunday May 14, 2017, Rock and Roll Forever Foundation founder Stevie Van Zandt received an honorary doctorate from Rutgers University. In his commencement address, Van Zandt stressed the importance of the kind of arts education his TeachRock project helps provide, telling graduates, “We are the only country in the world where art is considered a luxury. You are going …
On Wednesday April 26, TeachRock team members Bill Carbone and Christine Nick visited the lower East Side of Manhattan for a guest appearance on behalf of the Rosie’s Theater Kids at New York Public School 140. Founded by Rosie O’donnell, the Theater Kids foundation provides physical education through Broadway-connected dance to more than 2,000 New York City elementary students each …
This April, fill your classroom with the sound of discussions about music and American culture! TeachRock has lessons to help you celebrate Earth Day, National Poetry Month and Jazz Appreciation Month, all at no cost. Engage your students with rich content from TeachRock’s core curriculum and PBS Soundbreaking lessons while exploring ways that music by artists such as Bob Dylan, …
TeachRock has partnered with Show of Force and PBS to create sixteen new lesson plans that accompany the critically acclaimed series Soundbreaking: Stories From the Cutting Edge of Recorded Music. The eight episodes of Soundbreaking explore the dynamic tension between people who make music and the ever-evolving technology available to them. The TeachRock lessons use content from the episodes, period …
The Rock and Roll Forever Foundation’s lesson plan “The Music of the Civil Rights Movement” was recently featured in the New York Times blog The Learning Network. The Times article, “Teaching With Protest Music,” suggests educators can enrich any humanities course and increase student engagement by incorporating protest music into their classroom work. Authors Michael Gonchar and Katherine Schulten laud …
For the 2015-16 school year, the Rock and Roll Forever Foundation has partnered with 11 educators who we selected to participate in the Rock and Roll: An American Story pilot program. The teachers span middle school, high school, and the university level, teaching in seven states including New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Ohio, Colorado, and California. All teachers are leading either a semester-length or yearlong course using the Rock and Roll: An American …
For the 2015-16 school year, the Rock and Roll Forever Foundation has partnered with 11 educators who we selected to participate in the Rock and Roll: An American Story pilot program. The teachers span middle school, high school, and the university level, teaching in seven states including New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Ohio, Colorado, and California. All teachers are leading either a semester-length or yearlong course using the Rock and Roll: An American …
