TeachRock Offerings for Professional Development

A wonderful feast of options for fun and engaging Professional Development brought to you by TeachRock!

You can:

  • Choose our Meet and Greet Session for a general overview of TeachRock suitable for all subjects and age bands, and then create a customized menu of Professional Development for your teachers.
  • Become a TeachRock Partner School for year-round Professional Development and Support!
  • Bring the “An American History of Rock and Soul” course to your site and join schools across the country in offering this amazing semester or year-long class to your students. This course is most commonly taught in high school settings and offered for history credits, sometimes with general music credits available as well.
  • Scroll through and choose any of the below workshops that will help your team achieve its goals

Meet and Greet – An Introduction to TeachRock

Suitable for:

  • Teachers of all age bands and subject areas

In this hands-on workshop, participants will:

  • Learn how to use TeachRock to engage students in standards-aligned learning across all disciplines
  • Leave with a technique to use in class the next day as well as an understanding of the wealth of free resources available at Teachrock.org to support their classroom

An American History of Rock and Soul – A Complete Curriculum!

Suitable for:

  • High school social studies and general music teachers
  • Any teacher interested in integrating music and American history
  • Schools looking to engage more students in social studies

This course integrates the history of the United States from the 1940s on with the history of American popular music. Students consider how genres such as Rock and Roll, R&B, Pop, Folk, Latin, and Hip Hop have reflected and informed cultural, social, and political developments. The course is divided into four chronological units, with each unit containing approximately 20 media-rich lessons.

This course is an approved course in the Los Angeles Unified School District where it currently runs in more than a dozen schools. The course is also currently running in New Mexico, Colorado, New York and elsewhere.

In this hands-on workshop, participants will:

  • Explore the curriculum map for the course
  • Learn how to run a music-integrated history course, even if they are not music connoisseurs 
  • Leave with an understanding of the free resources to support the course available at Teachrock.org
  • Make connections with other educators who have run the course

Month-By-Month Resources – TeachRock Partnership

Suitable For:

  • Any district, school, or team looking for fresh approaches to calendar-based themes

Become a TeachRock Partner District or School! Through this year-long offering, participants will:

  • Receive 4 or more inservices throughout the year
  • Receive timely monthly updates with resources designed to support upcoming monthly observances and celebrations, as well as district objectives
  • School visits when requested and possible
  • TeachRock swag, a Steven Van Zandt virtual visit (when possible), and features at Teachrock.org and on affiliated social media, etc

Scroll to the bottom for our contact form. We can’t wait to hear from you!

Content-specific sessions

Math and Music with TeachRock

Suitable for:

  • Middle School math teachers
  • Pre-algebra and some algebra 1 teachers
  • Anyone interested in the possibilities of arts-integrated math

In this hands-on workshop, participants will:

  • Explore TeachRock’s “Math + the Music Industry” resources, which empower teachers to introduce a variety of skills related to statistics, data graphing, ratios and associated skills through music data
  • Explore TeachRock’s “Math and Mickey Hart (Grateful Dead)” resources, which employ a host of hands-on activities to introduce algebraic calculations, the physical principles of sound waves, the mathematics behind tuning and harmony, and the ways sound and music are measured using mathematics, all with custom media created in partnership with the Grateful Dead’s Mickey Hart
  • Leave with a knowledge of free resources to introduce student-led, project-based learning in math class

The Music that Shaped America

Suitable for:

  • High school history teachers
  • AP history teachers

Participants will:

  • Explore the lesson collection featuring media from the rich archive of anthropologist Alan Lomax’s Association for Cultural Equity
  • Learn to use music as a source document for AP History research questions
  • Make connections between music and 19th century US issues, including:
    • Mining and Unionization
    • Reconstruction
    • The Second Great Awakening
    • Cowboy culture, and much more!

Long Strange Trip: The Untold Story of the Grateful Dead

Suitable for:

  • Social Studies, ELA, Health, General Music, and STEAM teachers
  • Deadheads
  • Note: This collection is broad and the presentation can be crafted toward specific disciplines, age groups, etc

Participants will explore:

  • ELA resources connecting the Grateful Dead and the Beat movement
  • Social studies resources that make connections between the Grateful Dead and poltical and cultural movements from the 1950s through the Reagan era
  • Resources to engage students in discussions related to addiction and sobriety
  • STEAM resources that feature hands-on activities related to the Grateful Dead’s pioneering development of audio equipment (scaffolds for elementary through high school included)
  • Business with the Grateful Dead and “Going Viral,” and more!

Music, Movement, and Community with LADAMA

Suitable for:

  • Elementary teachers
  • Elementary and middle school music teachers
  • Anyone interested in music as a pathway to culturally responsive and sustaining classrooms

Participants will:

  • Explore resources that
    • Introduce the performing arts, culture, and ecology of Colombia, Venezuela, and Brazil with interactive instruction from the members of the group LADAMA!
    • Get students singing in Spanish and Portuguese, performing traditional dances, and learning the underlying rhythms to musical styles throughout South America
  • Leave with free resources to support their classrooms

RUMBLE: The Indians Who Rocked the World

Suitable For:

  • Middle and High School social studies teachers
  • General music teachers
  • Includes supports for SEL and AP

Participants will explore:

  • Resources created in partnership with the documentary RUMBLE: The Indians Who Rocked the World that
    • Introduce the Red Power Movement into discussions of the US Civil Rights Movement
    • Inspire students to consider cultural identity and their own layered identities
    • Explore and consider the concept of cultural appropriation
    • Consider Wounded Knee, federal boarding schools, and several Congressional acts from a Native American perspective

Lifesongs – Social Emotional Learning meets Career and Technical Education 

Suitable for:

  • Teachers of All Ages (the resources are scaffolded)
  • Anyone seeking a multimedia approach to project-based learning

Participants will:

  • Explore TeachRock’s Lifesongs Resources, a creative intergenerational project in which students interview an adult in their lives to record and preserve memories of the musical touchstones of their lives. Through this project, students create video content using interview clips, music, and artifacts to bring musical memories alive
  • Leave prepared to launch a media project with their students

Music and LGBTQ+ History

Suitable for:

  • Middle and high school teachers of civics, social studies, and SEL
  • Anyone seeking resources to support LGBTQ+ history in their classroom

Participants will:

  • Explore resources that
    • Introduce and add broad context to the Stonewall Riots
    • Look at the path to marriage equality through the lens of civics
    • Investigate the AIDs epidemic
  • Leave able to discuss the resources with confidence
  • Leave with an understanding of how to stay abreast of changing terminology

Please fill out the form below and we will get back to you within 3 days.
Thank you!

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION:

  • TeachRock Professional Development workshops are offered both virtually and in person.
  • TeachRock is a licensed PD hour provider in New York, and all participants receive a certificate of completion regardless of location.
  • Cost varies based on location and length of workshop, and TeachRock offers a sliding scale based on publicly available free and reduced price lunch rates in your district.