At the turn of the twenty-first century, there was a belief that American children were falling behind kids in other countries, especially in the fields of math and science. As a result, President George W. Bush signed the No Child Left Behind Act in 2002, which called for standard-based education reform in the nation’s elementary and secondary schools.
In order to receive federal funding under the act, states needed to develop achievement standards and monitor student progress through annual testing. The intent was to make schools more accountable for their students’ education and bridge the gap between poor and high performing school districts.
Because of its focus on math and science, however, the No Child Left Behind Act inadvertently led to funding cuts in the arts. Rock musician Steve Van Zandt – best known as the guitarist for Bruce Springsteen’s E Street Band – was a strong advocate of arts education and took it upon himself to lobby two prominent members of Congress, one representative of liberal Democrats and the other a conservative Republican.
The first was Senator Ted Kennedy of Massachusetts, who told Van Zandt that the arts had always been a vital part of school curriculums and it was unfortunate that the No Child Left Behind Act was being used to cut programs. Next up was Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, who expressed a similar viewpoint.
Unfortunately, both senators added that there wasn’t anything Congress could do to rectify the problem in the near future. Steve Van Zandt – frustrated by the shared sentiment but undeterred – decided to find an alternative way to keep the arts in the classroom.
“How about we do a music history curriculum and sneak it into all the different grade levels?” he asked a group of high school teachers. “It can be cross-curricular, taught in music class, history class, English class, social studies. The best part is, it will work for the students, not just the musicians, and we can keep the Arts in the DNA of the education system.”
Van Zandt tirelessly worked for over a decade to turn his idea into reality. First, he created the non-profit Rock and Roll Forever foundation to oversee the project – which was subsequently named TeachRock – convinced Bruce Springsteen, Bono from the Irish rock band U2, and film director Martin Scorsese to serve on the board, and then acquired the initial funding.
Van Zandt next crafted outlines for two hundred lesson plans and hired teachers to assist with fleshing them out. “It would take ten years and a few directors to get the curriculum on the right track,” he explained in his 2021 memoirs, Unrequited Infatuations. “It had to be bulletproof, since we’d only get one chance. We eventually got there.”
After touring in support of a new album in 2017, Steve Van Zandt held a Rock and Roll Forever board meeting to discuss TeachRock. Although a hundred lesson plans had been created – the self-imposed minimum needed for launching the program – and partnerships forged with Scholastic Magazine, PBS, and HBO, the program wasn’t gaining the necessary traction on the local school level.
Board chairman David Roth had attended one of Van Zandt’s concerts and was impressed by the performance. “The show is a living embodiment of the TeachRock curriculum,” he said during the meeting. “Why don’t we use the tour as a way to publicize it and register teachers?”
Steve Van Zandt immediately concurred. Five hundred tickets for each show of the resulting “Teachers Appreciation Tour” were given away free to educators, who were also invited to attend workshops on TeachRock before the live performances. As a result, thirty thousand teachers registered to incorporate the curriculum into their classrooms.
In simplest terms, TeachRock uses popular music as the entry point for learning about everything from civics to social studies, science to history, and geography to math. Each lesson plan integrates audio, video, images, information handouts, and a list of additional resources to answer specific questions:
“How did Elvis Presley’s early career reflect race relations and racial tensions in mid-1950s America?”
“How did music advance the goals and inform the tactics of the Civil Rights Movement?”
“How can the Beatles’ growth in popularity be demonstrated by math?”
“What was the Berlin Wall and how did music respond to what it symbolized?”
“TeachRock is rooted in a teaching philosophy that believes students learn best when they truly connect with the material to which they’re introduced,” the organization’s website explains. “Obviously, popular music is one such point of connection.”
Steve Van Zandt experienced that connection firsthand in his youth. He was thirteen-years-old when the Beatles performed on The Ed Sullivan Show in 1964 and the impact did more than just inspire him to become a rock star. “You’re responding emotionally to something,” he explained to New Yorker magazine in 2018. “Bits of information come through. So, suddenly, (because of the Beatles) you find yourself learning about Eastern religion or about orchestration. Learning about literature from Bob Dylan. You didn’t get into it to learn things, but you learn things anyway.”
TeachRock initially selected Orangethorpe Elementary School in Fullerton, California – along with its 725 students and 28 teachers – as the organization’s flagship Partner School. Over the years that followed, Hopatcong Borough Schools in New Jersey and Milwaukee Public Schools signed up as well, along with 36 schools in Los Angeles and 41 in New York City. By March 2021, the number of lesson plans available on TeachRock.org had increased to 193, with approximately 800,000 students being exposed to the curriculum nationwide.
“Music happens to be my thing, but we’re a little bit broader than that,” Steve Van Zandt told WBGO Radio in 2020. “Our curriculum is based on music history. My passion is integrating the arts, not just music. They should all be integrated into the basic process of education. We are just starting to have partner schools now. I had a chance to visit one which we’ll be talking about Monday night and seeing our curriculum integrated kindergarten through sixth grade was one of the most exciting moments of my entire life.”
A few months later – in April 2021 – the Connecticut Department of Education announced that it was likewise incorporating TeachRock into its school system. “Using popular music to grab students’ attention and pull them into their academic curriculum is a creative way to engage students and help them achieve success in their studies,” Governor Ned Lamont said at the time.
Connecticut Deputy Commissioner of Education Desi Nesmith added, “We must give educators the tools they need to innovate from the inside out to engage students in creative ways. TeachRock’s unique curriculum does that by connecting students to history, culture, and human experiences while positively impacting their social-emotional development.”
It’s been a long journey for Steve Van Zandt – from meeting with Senators Ted Kennedy and Mitch McConnell shortly after the passage of the No Child Left Behind Act, to the launch of his Teachers Appreciation Tour in support of TeachRock, to the state of Connecticut integrating the curriculum into their schools.
“Teachers can’t teach when they don’t have the kid’s attention,” Van Zandt told the Washington Post in 2018. “And we think this is the way to do it. Music is the ultimate common ground and the way to keep kids’ attention.”
Slowly but surely, the message is getting through.
Anthony Letizia