Rock n' Roll Will Save Our Schools

So uh what do I mean when I say rock and roll because it's it's a big statement rock and roll will save our schools so rock and roll for me is more than just a genre of music it's a way of life it's a lifestyle it's about confidence it's about self identity importantly it's about doing things differently breaking down the barriers celebrating being unique C celebrating being different and not being scared to push the barriers And starting a godamn revolution and how we can apply that potentially to education because I think now more than ever

we need to be real about it and we need to really start of reimagining what our schools are looking like for the purpose of the outcomes of our students so um I want to ask you all in audience to think about a time in your life where music has played an important memorable moment in your life and maybe the song you walk down the aisle to or the song For your first dance or maybe uh the posters you to have on the wall in your bedroom or the first record you bought does anyone want to

give us a little little something let me don't be shy we're all friends I could tell that you wanted to say I could tell your finger went up I mean it's a constant it's a constant so like right now it's it's it could be everything I could go I could go backwards I could go forwards with music But it's it's a constant that's there so it's it's um there's a quote I have it's not mine obviously I'd have to go back and look at it um and I'll find it for you during the presentation I'll

say it later come back to but I mean from being young and listening to you know whatever Sesame Street or I was sent to my room and I had my uh record player and I would go play my records and then to my first con my first concert for me like my parents took me to Buddy Rich and Things like that but my first concert was John Bon joovy of course and then on and on and on I mean go to live music like almost every week so it's just part of me thank you anybody

else yes down the back um no when you said that I love music um it is a therapy for me my music the I listen to all genres of music and I Implement that in our school too um but I it is a therapy it it we were just Sitting outside in the sun and my and like me and music right now it's just it it's just a Feelgood um and you're saying like the posters on your wall and I I started laughing because when I was little my first concert was the Spice Girls and

I had their posters walls and um then I went to in sync in Back Street Boys and I take my kids now my kids first concert was Dirty Heads and it was just we had a lot of music is very intertwined In my personal life my school's life and then just like anytime that like last night we listened to a lot of live music so yeah I know it's I'm excited to hear what you have thank you great thank you thank you for your thoughts um that's a really great line music is intertwined within us

as beings and intertwin throughout all our lives but for some reason when we go into a classroom a lot of the time and in schools it disappears so I also want to mention that at any Point I want this to be a conversation if you have something you're passionate about or something you want to share or something you want to say please you're welcome to come up and join me here or you can just give us your thoughts or or ideas uh from your seat because I want this to be a conversation and not just

me giving my thoughts up here on stage so um uh what I wanted to tie that into was exactly what he said that music is Intertwin within all of us and I think we can take that and look at how we can apply into schools to get students to emotionally connect and feel good about themselves and connect with others and build their confidence and reimagine what classrooms can look like then I think we actually we can actually make some really powerful changes so uh this is me my name is Ricky I'm a music educator uh

what else I'm a I'm a musician I played in a rock and roll Band I'll tell you about that in a minute I'm also the co-founder of uh amp Arts which is aada aada 6 performing arts program that elementary schools use um so let me take you back to where how I how I got here so when I grow up well when I was growing up at home my dad was a drummer and we had a drum kit around the house and music was always being played and I loved music and I wanted to jam

with my dad and play music with him so if he was a drummer I thought it only Made sense for me to start learning the guitar so we could play songs together so at school I was the only child who took guitar lessons in my lunch break at the high school across the road cuz the school I went to didn't do any music and I started jamming with my dad and had a great time I loved music and then I moved into high school if you think about high school it's it's a a crazy time

in your life now you were mentioning Back Street Boys in NSync you Can see uh I've got some blonde tips happening there they are not El natural hour um it's around the time the Millennium album came out for backst street boys and I was channeling some Nick Carter um now going to a school like I did channeling Nick Carter um doesn't always get you a lot of of friends and um and high school was was a challenge I didn't have a lot of confidence I didn't do great at school I wasn't super academic I did

really Really poorly in tests um struggled socially didn't get invited to many parties but what I did love was guitar and I loved music now in high school when music is available to you to do at school I would go to music classes but something happened where I was as bored in music as I was in math class or in science class because I just felt it didn't connect with it the music wasn't what I was excited about it was classical music it was Jazz and I was Like this doesn't relate to me in any

way I don't identify with it what it and at this point I was thinking I was I was thinking about giv me up on school and I don't know what I was going to do really um but all I knew is that I love guitar and then I met this my friend of mine named Mark and he gave me a cassette and on this cassette I heard this song called slideway by Oasis the next track on it was mixtape he gave me was Smells Like Teen Spirit by this band called Nana and then my hero

by Foo Fighters and then Glycerine by Bush and then you ought to know B Lanas moriset now what a banging five tracks of of a compilation and I that was the first time I thought I heard those songs and I was like that's what I want to do and when I said that's what I want to do what I meant by that was the way I just felt then by listening to those songs which was I can do anything and I'm really excited by this is how I wanted people to feel when When they heard

a song that I wrote so from that point I decided I'm going to start a band so I left school and then uh I started a band I commited my brother to play drums and uh we started writing songs and jamming we were four piece inor rock and roll band and uh I thought how can I hear how can I get PE lots of people to hear my music now more I got to record it so we saved up some money went to the studio recorded these songs And then I thought I need need to

get these on radio so I went to a local National broadcaster in Australia which is called Triple J went to the front door they let me in I said I want to play the director my song they said okay now I thought this was normal that actually never really happens um and the program director was in his office he let me come in I introduced myself I gave him the song on a CD and he put her on and listen to it and I Sor his foot Start tapping and I thought that's a good that's

a good sign and then he turned around and said um this is pretty good what what what's up with you guys I said we're new band written this song He said thanks and then I left and that was it a week later it got added to rotation which means it was played every single day for three months on the national radio station so from there we got fans people started coming to the shows uh our a shows got bigger and Bigger we started touring we did some more recordings we got some more songs on radio

we started playing all all around Australia and then we got this email to say do you want to open for this band they're coming over from America and they're called The Academy is so this was they'll signed this label called fuel By Ramen which uh had like Fallout Boy and a few other big bands and we thought great so we played these shows and that was the first time we Walked on stage and people are generally losing their minds in the audience because there's four people have come on stage with their instruments about play some

songs and it was also at that point my parents came so I didn't tell my parents I was doing this at the time and uh they came to see us play and at that point my dad was like this is great he stopped his work and came on the road to be our our roie cuz it looked like a lot more fun than what he was doing and uh So we toured and uh we then uh one night we're playing this this show and it was I thought it was going to be a pretty crap

gig and um there was a wasn't wasn't many people there and uh there was a gentleman in the audience he came up afterwards and said uh do you want to come to the UK and play this Festival that I book called The Great Escape and I also book glenberry and he end up he he ended up being the agent for uh previously for a band called The Smiths And um so we went to the UK and we played all these festivals and T it around then we came to America and we bought an old Dodge

Ram van and and played everywhere from New York to LA to Delaware to jie beach to South Carolina to Arkansas and had an amazing time what it showed me though when I looked out into the crowd is that music has a way to Bringing strangers together helping them connect and helping them forget about their Troubles for a little while and then we got the the offer to open for this band called The Smashing Pumpkins which was one of the bands that were on my cassette when uh Mark handed me this tape so it was a

wonderful full circle moment um and it was at that point that uh I realized the way that people are feeling in the audience and connecting strangers coming together and forgetting about their Troubles how about you make students feel like that in a classroom for that short moment of their life in that classroom forgetting about their troubles and connecting emotionally with with music so that's why I moved into the teaching and uh became a music teacher at elementary school level and uh was teaching in the classroom on weekends I was still touring and so sometimes Mondays

I was feeling a little rusty coming in but but It was a it was a good time um so I went into the classroom and uh what I noticed was um so does anyone else play in a band here anyone a musician play instruments nice what's you still performing uh we are remote we play together online and record I love that what's your band called a professional person love it this is not a band camp plug that's how I'm here Liz you're still performing Aren you I met Liz the other day yeah I perform in

around Boston area yeah what's your what's your band called I play with other bands more of a session okay session nice um hands up if you're a school teacher in this room okay cool hands up if you're a musician in this room okay hands up if you're neither other the two options and you're something else oh okay what are you what are you guys I thought you were in on class me yeah um I I'm a owner of a private school okay cool great okay so what I noticed is that um that when I brought

music into the classroom for these kids they went crazy like now I made sure that this kind of metaphor made sense was uh I hear you have seagulls here in the US and at home when we were gr going to the beach my parents always said don't give chips to the seagulls because they come and they go nuts and they never leave and they Just like stay around by your feet all the time and they wanted all the attention that was what happened when I played guitar and played rock and roll when I went to

see kids at school they lost their minds like they've been starved of Engagement of excitement of something different and I thought what's what's been happening here so um I uh hi good I did a little research and realized that 80% of schools in Australia were Not in a position to be to deliver music at an elementary school in the classroom which for me was was crazy and it also seemed so simple and I thought we could do a really really simple little thing together like I would like you would be my fourth graders now so

what we'll do is I'm going to get my guitar really quickly we'll try this this could go either way okay so this is a like a body for do Is I know together [Music] buddy a boy make a big noise playing in the streets going world you got M on your face your big disgrace somebody better put you back and then hold the kids gu [Applause] um so example here of went to visit this school sorry uh a little example here of A wonderful collection of students I never met these students before I went to

visit them and uh it gives you a little insight into try and have a look at their expressions when you can try and see their faces in the video um do I press the middle button to play the video it's way [Music] [Music] uh but you can see how excited they are And half the time teachers don't even know that those kids can sing or even know those S I didn't show them that song it's just like that just know it it's incredible um let me ask you and especially any teachers who are here in

the a audience what what does it what does music look like in schools here what have you seen what do you know what can you share with the audience does anyone want to give us any insights you guys want to say Something yes thank you yes yeah uh so uh secondary school teacher here uh I use uh English language arts as a vehicle to teach music as well through literary analysis and stuff like that but uh something I do on a weekly basis is I run a VI check session so so we have an established

mood you bring in a song and we try and figure out can you pass the vibe check effectively and kind of tune into the theme of the week so I've just really been excited about this Every week because I get so much new music all the time from of course chapel rone and the binson Boon that we're hearing about as well but they also go back to everything that you've been playing today as well so it's cool because there's old school respect but so much else going on too good idea I like that concept take

that yes I'm a math teacher second through 8th grade and we use a lot of uh songs just to help number rock is my go-to website um Just to help kids learn Concepts I even had some fifth graders uh memorize a decimal song sing it back to me so they got out of a quiz for the week and so they love it multi-sensory map well done well done I'm a principal of an elementary school that is a final performing art school and we're a public school um in our district there's 15 elementary schools and so

what our elementary school students experience in most schools is music twice a week um we Just have an amazing music teacher so we our students get music twice a week plus musicals plus electives in Arts and Music um so wow would you say excited thank you would you say that is a common thing or is that quite unique to your school music twice a week at an elementary level that sounds incredible but is it is that something that you would see at every school well in our district um it's it's common and I think in

our area kids get music regularly With a music teacher um but what's uncommon is that classroom teachers integrate music and other kinds of things while they're teaching other subjects so that's the part that that's where we're trying to get to to make sure that it's just not the stand alone you get to go to music and have some fun a couple of times a week yeah great way EXC yes I'm a principal at a K2 building as well we have music twice a week for 30 Minutes just time um and I got a new music

teacher a couple years ago he was actually a former principal and wanted to go back to the classroom and he asked when when he started if we could tear down what we've always done in music classroom and he started by just putting sorts of different instuments out and just let stand back and the kid expl and then taking what they did and building on that you know where their wow incredible that's awesome Thank you for sharing those ideas um well yes okay yes so I'm a music professor at Cordia University and I teach Arts integration

to elementary teachers and I served as a public school band director for 21 years before coming to University and in the state of Texas every child in public system has to have these and so elementary kids get either all the time or three to two days a week two to three days a week and then in Middle and high school they usually specialize in band Orchestra choir and then we have all the other things like music production as well and different systems thank you so I thought what would be really really great is is to

have someone who is on the ground in the classroom uh to give us a real insight of what her school Community looks like some of the challenges around what is presented to them in that school community and how she uses her passion For music to about to integrated into the classroom to reimagine what a classroom experience looks like for her amazing children and it's also her first ever time in the state of Texas um can you please welcome Year sorry grade three Elementary School teacher all the way from Crown height Brooklyn Gabriella Garcia [Applause] everybody

gab thanks for joining us no problem so I think it's really important Can you give us um a little insight into what your school is like and the community to kind of lay the lay the found for us yeah so we're a a small public school in Brooklyn specifically in the neighborhood of Crown Heights in New York City um it's a title one school we have about 250 kids um and Title One For Those bet everyone in the room knows it means most of the students come from low-income families um and yeah uh it's really

cool school uh yeah so now I I Came to visit your school uh and it's uh an incredible school but very different what from the kind of uh school that I would see in Australia um can you tell us about some of the challenges that you would see um for kids and families coming into the classroom yeah so our school specifically and this is I think um in our district as well which encompasses kind of like Crown Heights and bedy Brooklyn um we face um low enrollment low attendance um so Sometimes just hard to get

kids to school we have chronic absences a lot of our families experience Financial insecurity um or food insecurity this is also common common um across the district um and we face really low funding specifically our school um because our enrollment is slowly but surely going up but as we know like schools are funded per child so the more students that you lose the less money that you get um so just like as we have Low enrollment we just don't get as much money um to have like specials such as music and art we do have

art we do have gym we do not have music as a special so it's interesting to hear that in Texas you have to have music um because we don't have a music teacher at our school and again and I don't know if it's common and I know other schools in the district do have music but New York City is also the largest public school system in the country has like 1 million Students um and schools vary so greatly so you can have schools that are like very Arts focused and then have schools that all they

do is like reading and math and we'll have have like no Arts um but yeah so we struggle kind of like with funding a lot so just to clarify though um Creative Arts and Music is compulsory but it's the expectation is kid students are going to experience it when they go to school like they do Here in Texas um so what are the some of the challenges around trying to provide that opportunity for students at school think Staffing Staffing is a huge challenge in our school we do have um an arts teacher we used to

have a dance teacher um as well and just not having enough money to like get instruments or get materials that you would need to kind of like teach this CL these classes so a lot is like self-funded or if our principal is able to get Grants um for so we're able to get grants like our art teacher was able to get a grant to get more art materials and for example our principal was able to get money for us to get guitars which we could um get into but a lot of it is just dependent

on like grants and just getting money from other places other like not necessarily like our federal and local funding in order to have um materials that we need yeah now I went to visit Gabby and incredible Elementary School teacher but what she's not saying is that the music at the school is driven by her and if she's not there the students are not getting a music education at all and she's done some incredible things but also I think what's important is um uh some of the ways that you've seen your work with music and how

it's helped the students and I know that you have one particular story that you've mentioned to me before when I first came to visit around a Student and I think it's I think you need to share it with everyone CU it's really cool um so when I first started this is my third year at the school that I'm at now when I first started we had no music we had art and dance at the time um and we didn't have music which I was kind of like really bummed about cuz I grew up like I

was in a band in high school like I was in choir I was in music club like music was a huge deal like it was always like such a huge part Of my education um and other kids that like I went to school with and at other schools that I student taught at like kids did music and they were like learning instruments and it was really cool um and I noticed that a lot of our kids are like super duper creative I always say their school really should be an art school but they didn't kind

of like have like the classes um to kind of like be able to do that um so I started bringing in my guitar and really at the Dance teacher at the time kind of had a guitar that her daughter was no longer using so she gave it to us um to our classroom because she's like I know you play guitar you can use this with the kids so we just started kind of like playing songs I would play like the Beatles and yesterday has become a favorite among the schools so I now taught the kids

that are currently in fifth and fourth grade and now I have my third graders cuz I'm third grade so all The kids like know Yesterday by the Beatles like by heart now um and we'll play it at like school stuff so it became kind of a way to kind of like relax at first first and we would play music I'd like show them some songs we'd start singing it they were really into it like I would pull out a guitar and they'd be like w like I want to play it what is that um and

they would ask for it like every morning are we going to do guitar um and we also had basically like A new um shipment of books come to the school and one of the books is this book called liba um by which is a book about a folk artist um Elizabeth cotton who I love and I saw the read-aloud book and I was like oh my gosh like this Elizabeth C I told the kids it's one of my favorite musicians like we should read it um and we read the book and I showed them Elizabeth

Cotton's music and they were just so into it they were just like extremely impacted by her music um and They were like can we play those songs on guitar so I started kind of like learning them they started singing them and one of my students at the time this was two years ago so he's in fifth grade now um he came up to me and he was like I really want to learn how to play guitar I want a guitar um like it had really kind of like inspired him which was really cool and our

school um does this thing where every child in our school gets a gift for winter like our Winter holiday like party um we basically pair up with an organization the kids write letters to Santa they like skateboards like I want like I don't know like Barbies and stuff like that and each kid gets a gift um cuz somebody else is able to get it for them um and at this time um our student was like oh I want a guitar and I was like talk with the school I'm like can we get him a guitar

like hope it's not too late and by the time December came around he Got a guitar for his gift along with some other ones and I went to him and I said hey next semester really serious about it you bring the guitar to school during lunch I'll teach you surely enough every day he showed up and this is a student that had very low attendance every he started coming to school more and every day he would come with the guitar and he would give up his recess and we would play guitar for about 20 to

25 minutes um for the second Semester by the end of the school year he learned guitar like we were jamming we were playing it was really great it was super cool um and basically with that um because of him the idea for like our after school program with guitar was born so I have a really awesome principal like I went to her and I was like hey my student learned guitar like this year like this was really awesome we got a new principal and I was like can we do an after school program is There

a way we can like get money for guitars and she was able to do that and we got 12 guitars and we took an empty room um in our school and just basically like I put up an Amazon wish list for my friends to get us like posters we have like Jimmy Hendrick posters and like all this like R like cords stuff like that made the room look like really nice um put like some like rugs around um and we're just kind of like able to make it work we got the 12 guitars um shipped

to Us um yeah and basically like last year on Wednesdays after school I started teaching guitar to about like a group of like rotating like 10 10 kids and it would be between at that time third and fourth graders cuz I took some of the like the kid that I taught last year he came around he helped other kids learn it's crazy like they remember like this is a G chord this a major chord this A minor chord and I'm like whoa like that's really crazy um and so kids just Started like learning guitar even

had one of the students she was like I wish every day was Wednesday cuz that's the after school guitar day and we've continued it this year um so now we have after school with third fourth and fifth so I see all three grades and we'll do a little guitar rotation so the kids at are in after school get exposed to guitar um but yeah we're not for that kid and for my principal being able to like get us Those guitars like we would kind of like not have music um so that's basically how like our

like after school guitar and like music thing was born um and we include it in our classroom every day too amazing um I want to touch on a point that you said with the student said I wish every day was Wednesday so when we're in a an educational climate where uh treny and attendance is at an all-time low and educational spending is at an all-time high when we have kids Saying Wednesday is the day I want to come to school because I get to do guitar or I get to do music that I think is

something that is how rock and roll can save our schools um incredible story what kind of benefits have you seen not just through attendance um but what other things have you other benefits have you seen uh music and rock and roll provide your students in the classroom it's a lot of Joy um kids are just I feel like happier to come to school it Provides like a little brain break between subjects so it just gets their brain working um like basically for the next activity that we're going to go into so they're just generally more

engaged and when they know we're doing guitar um throughout the day they'll just be more like into what we're doing so that's been really good the attendance thing has been awesome they'll just come to school more especially in the school with like Chronic absenteeism like anything that will get them to school we even do like dance parties um for kids that like come to school earlier so we we integrate music in that way because it just gets them like so hyped um and we even do like now in our classroom uh karaoke lunch and they'll

stay up and one of our kids was like I love singing it like makes me feel so alive she's 8 years old she talking like this it's so cool um but yeah so we see just basically They're just more more engaged in class they come to school more it's just more joy they're just not kind of like I'm going to go to sleep and like be boring um it just gets them like super energized one thing I saw that I thought was really cool and interesting was um so Gabby's class is what I one of

the things I observe is that the classroom is incredibly diverse with students backgrounds but also student needs um you have a you have two additional Teachers in the classroom um there's some you there's there's some challenges that these students have to um try and get their best out of them and and try and give them every opportunity they can to learn and and you made this point around that it helps them settle can you talk a little bit about that oh yeah so I should have said that I'm in an ICT classroom an integrated co-

teing model so 40% of our students have an IEP or are um basically Special education and I'm the special ed teacher um and we have students with a diverse like needs like from autism ADHD learning disabilities um um and this year we have two um two students um with autism and they're so into music like whenever we do guitar they get super excited it's such a good Brain Break for them it's something that just like brings them a lot of Joy um and so it's basically it helps them like settle down and both also get

engaged to like what Our next activity is going to be and it's just like music creates an inherently inclusive environment cuz everybody's into it it's accessible to everybody it's sound um so it just meets like all these sensory needs as well um so it's really really good when you have an inclusive classroom special education students music is just like the best way to get the ball rolling brilliant so yes I just want to commend you first because what you're doing is amazing but I also For those of us that are in a classroom you know

um my friend and I were just sitting here talking and one common thing that i' I've heard throughout I'm a from a private school so I don't have as much paperwork and and um funding issues the way I I know most teachers and and people struggle with but I you know for some they may say oh that's an elective that music piece as an elected but there's so many executive functioning skills that you Are you are Scaffolding in this self-confidence um just hearing you say for child that didn't want to come to school that doesn't

like you saying academics wasn't my thing I mean I think everybody in this room whether it's in our classroom or you yourself or your children or somebody that you know you know I we have people like that or we know students like that where testing isn't their thing but there there's so much more than a test or There's so much more than and these things that you are implementing and that you are gifting them the opportunities to have the choice or you know the opportunity to have that it is that will carry them so much

farther in life which is so awesome and I just I I thank you for your work it's very inspiring to hear you say that than you story thanks thanks for being a great teacher I am a superintendent over over multiple Districts right now but I I just wanted to share if anybody didn't ever hear of it before a skoo SK and it is a tactile control um interface designed for anyone to participate in music so it could be somebody on the Spectrum it could be a Down syndrome student that wants to play in the marching

band at the high school and you can program it to have any sound whether that you know whatever it is and then they can participate and be a part Of uh the band and it it it could be um a person that may not have uh digit control they could be using elbows knees anything anything so you could get all students participating thank you yes last thing I didn't know um I'm a I'm a school board in county and um I'm a music first my son has autism is currently studying at College music and no

we di to get there you never know but I'm curious in the work you do whether it comes up you look at the research Around the fact that there's actually a high prevalence of musical talent in neurod dient folks right there's a high percentage of Perfect Pitch people have ADHD um I'm not a musician so if I say this wrong but there's some better ability to understand musical business I don't understand what that means but I've read it um so I'm just kind of curious I one thing I'm trying to Foster system is actually utilizing

music in our um our coaching class special Ucation classes specifically as an area of strength for some of our students I'm just kind of curious if that has come up and as you do these presentations talking about not only does it kind of help get students connected or you help but actually when you're trying to Foster student strengths maybe look at this yeah AB absolutely and it's going to lead on well to the next thing I'm about to show um so I might let my next story answer that question but did Gabby Did you want

to say anything no yeah I mean um we have like looked at that research and I was where when I was studying education and all of that that was a big thing and I have noticed that a lot of my neurode Divergent students are the ones that like um are the ones that like get the most passionate sometimes about music and pick up chords like this um or able to like kind of like tune the guitar easier just pick up the pitch easier and friends that are Just more hyperactive or like their bodies like the

way to like get their bodies focused on like what they're doing it's like through like the sensory experience of playing music um and usually yeah like they pick up music so like really really well yeah really well totally yeah absolutely and I think my next story will will touch on that but in short one of the most powerful things about music and something I'm really passionate about is unlocking the full Potential in every child and I feel that our school systems at the moment uh are quite often quite narrowly focused in terms of the curriculum

offerings and it only I guess captures a small part of our um uh it's only there it works for some students but not for all and music need to be part of the bigger experience for child and part of the bigger conversation um before I do that so one of the great things I really thank you for your question um I really enjoyed When see Gabby's she had this song that as students they wrote together and I love the irony in in this story can you just introduce this song and I'm go grab the guitar

and I want you to demonstrate this song for everybody you tell them tell them the background of the story so we I was just going generally over music genres with the kids and I'm like you can play Blues and sing sad lyrics about something that you're sad about and I would just kind of like play like the Common chord progression and they just kind of like jump in after like I gave them an example but the genre that my kids this year which is so awesome is are really into just like punk music so whenever

I put them par they just start moshing they don't even know that they're moshing and they just like running like pushing each other and I'm like yeah like I'm very much like Jack Black in School of Rock when they're doing that um and so we just made kind Of like a really simple Punk song together um and the lyrics that they came up with was just yeah yeah yeah sure okay [Music] okay whatever you want and they would be like and they started going like I don't want to go to school and they be like

sucks gaming rules and we just do that for like a lot of time and they just start getting up and yelling and it's really cool the irony I loved is that Kids were excited to come to school and start their day by singing the song I don't want to go to school because I got to sing it and rock it out in a punk rock song which I thought was just brilliant but when I got to witness that was not just kids sitting in a circle singing it was kids that were passionately connecting with the

song with music but with each other and they were all doing it there was not one student in the room who was doing their Own thing um who was disconnected everyone was connected and singing the song together collaboratively um and it was it was really fun and I felt like I wanted to learn the chords and join in um but it was it was really cool thanks for uh for sharing that song every day they they ask for it get them like it gets them really worked up so I'll be like at the end of

the day not at the beginning of the day we'll do a soft song we'll end the day with with The punk song yeah oh like so I just quickly wanted to show Gabby if that was right um and this this is off the back as well of of that lovely question um here we go I got a um a photo here and uh it's a wonderful photo so I went to visit this school this is a school in Sydney and uh I don't wasn't regularly working with these students I just popped in the School knew

about my work and wanted me to come in and and uh work with a a range of different classes throughout the day and so as one one class was leaving another one was coming in and just doing back to back so I can try and see every kid in the school and I had my guitar on um a class had just left in this class has come in and they've just sat down and I was kind of just noodling on my guitar playing a little riff and the kid sat down and this little the the

Young boy standing up was I could hear him humming a melody or a song and I was attracted to it because it was uh had quite a lot of structure to it and it was quite hooky and I thought that's cool and often I want to encourage students to do that so I said that's great keep going so start I started playing louder and then he he started singing louder and then he started putting words to it and they weren't like specific words it was more like Kind of made up words but it had really

strong melodic structure to it and I was like this this kid understands Melody really well this is really interesting and cool and then as he kept rambling they started to become the words started to become a bit more um audible like I could start to make out what he was kind of saying there were words but they weren't really making sense all together and then it started then the more he kept going the more it started to make Sense and it was an actual kind of lyrical rhyme and then at this point I said keep

going I handed him a microphone and then he did it through speaker so that everyone could hear and um we kept jamming and then I noticed the look on people's faces was surprised and really shocked and I could tell that this wasn't something that would usually happen everyone was a bit taken back by it and I was particular looking at the this this boy here he was so pumped for Him but what's really important is that there's a teacher at the back with a green jumper on and she has a mouth wide open um she's

a support teacher and uh after we did this she came around and said keep going cuz we want to take some photos and send it to his mom and dad I was like okay so at this point I kind of picked up that this is kind of unusual this child doesn't usually do this and uh we kept going and then um and then I stopped everyone then kind of went into Rapturous Applause and there were teachers crying down the back and the the principal was coming to take a video to like sent to the parents

and I was like wow that was that was a lot and I thought what what's what was all that about and then the teacher came up and said he's nonverbal and so so that is why music's important so um I've got a uh a friend wonderful Colleague of mine parzy um I I think Ricky the fact now is he's gonna say a few things all right good um he's a professor of Education written a bunch of wonderful books has anyone heard of this this guy before you have no okay um he's a extremely well renowned

well respected educator um professor of education at the University of Melbourne and uh quite passionate about music so he really wanted to say a few words on Behalf of kind of a academic point of view around the importance of music and how we need to start looking at reimagining what classrooms look like oh here we go I I think Ricky the fact now is that we have serious challenges in our school systems one is that kids are less and less engaged when they go to school the other one is that we have a well-being uh

among young people in alltime LW and then you know thirdly the the fact that you know kids young people want to do things that they're passionate about they want to be curious about stuff and all of these things are now u in a in a kind of a crisis in our school so that's why I believe that you know we have music in school that will address the engagement there are more people as you know through your work the more people go to school because they want to do music um they have a better Sense

of belonging in the school the school is the place where they want to be when there's more music to stuff that they want to do and then I think finally the uh you know the Curiosity that is really the the driver of improvement and transformation in education is something that comes with the music so it's it's a simple like that it's it's not rocket science riy man it has to be it has to be done based kind of a common sense Nice so here's what we know um and I can just tell you from my

what's happening in Australia is that I I touched on it before that spending on education is going up and up and up and we're spending more and more and more every year um but the outcomes are getting worse and going down and it's exacerbated in in our public schooling systems and exacerbated in the students who perhaps needed the Most from our most challenging uh communities um while at the same time as P mentioned that student mental health well-being and sense of belonging is at a real all-time low um if we were to look at it

against say a country like Finland who are often used as examples in in uh in education one of the things that they do around music is that to be an elementary school teacher in Finland you have to be able to teach music in the classroom you have to be able to Play an instrument what that does is it ensures that every child in elementary school in Finland can experience music in a classroom whether that school has has access to a music teacher or not um it also means that the students Health mental health well-being sense

of belonging connection to the classroom is significantly stronger but also what it actually injects into the country's Arts economy is significantly more um so and this isn't a new thing um A couple years ago rcky the fact now is that we have here we go um so Pary and I presented this idea uh in Sydney Australia at one of the country's most well-renowned venues the Sydney Opera house um around how rock and roll can save our schools I actually really enjoyed the irony of that as well being in what is traditionally a uh a venue

where classical and traditional music is performed we sold out the venue talking about how Rock and roll can reimagine classrooms which which I really enjoyed um but what it did though was show that people really believe and people are open to seeing how we can reimagine schools with music and how um music outside of just your traditional classical music can help kids improve their engagement excitement sense of belonging in a classro and how we can start to do things differently um and so I want to finish with uh three things because I Always feel like

it's helpful when you go to these things and you and you leave and you're like yeah what well now what so here's three things that I think uh perhaps in Australia we can do and then perhaps you can apply to your kind of contextual situation so the first one is I think that uh firstly in what has become a very narrow view of curriculum whereas we're obsessed with numy and literacy um that music needs to be valued as important as those other Subjects in our schools secondly uh in my opinion we need to make every

teacher a music teacher we focused on for many years now making every teacher a numeracy and literacy teacher Elementary level um I feel that teachers are actually open to Bringing music and arts and creativity into the classroom but in all Fant they just not given the time and the school and their initial teacher education to be a to do it so I feel like we need to make sure every teacher Feels comfortable and has the skills to do it and thirdly I really feel that music needs to be contextualized whether that's rock and roll or

whether that's hip-hop or whether that's Punk or whether that's country music but something that identifies with students like how music identified with me when I was in high school when I want to listen to rock and roll or the students in in Crown Heights who want to get excited about punk rock or whether it's hip-hop Music or country music so that it's not just around classical traditional country uh classical music it's something that every student can be excited about and engage with before you finish do you want to ask any questions to the wonderful Gabby

or myself or any comments or any thoughts or anything that you want to share collabora collaboratively with our wonderful group here question yes I'll use the mic yes Use the mic oh use the mic that's great um and you actually just sort of started to speak to it a little bit there's something like kind of mechanically accessible about the guitar like you can play it and someone can watch you play and you can all sit around but what have you thought about how to bring you know rock and roll sort of like this stand in

but as you said like hipop or even pop music that is based on like you know a lot of digital sounds And you know other like stles of putting music together to engage students who might respond more to that than something that's sort of like guitar based like rock or country or punk music sure yeah um I've heard a lot of success with doing that particularly in middle school and high school um I'm obviously on my work work is on Elementary School level so but I have colleagues who have had a lot of success with

that in high school so I think it's a great idea do You have any comments on that yeah I mean cuz I work with third they a lot into like beats and obviously we can't necessarily make beats in the cloud like I don't have logic pro or like Ableton neither am I like like know how to use those programs but um I know that there's kind of like little programs for I think students where they can actually like make beats um and like more of like that electronic music accessibility like through those Platforms um but

the young kids are into it um because it's also what they listen to um but I haven't personally Incorporated um it as much cuz what I mostly know how to do is guitar uh but I do use Garage Band every once in a while it would be super into showing the kids kind of like how you can make a beat there it's probably just the I I know what you're saying about the guitar but it's probably just the ease at which it it's there to pick up and do it you know And what from my

experience teaching teaching on class and going to visit Gabby's class these are not like chilled easy places they're like there's a lot of energy there's a lot of diverse needs happening there's kids that are under the tables on top of tables arriving at 11:00 a.m. because Mom and Dad didn't get them to school and suddenly suddenly there's a student that's just arrived so the guitar is really easy to be to pick up and and Have play a little song then then and put it down probably same with like piano and you know I've seen like

Glock and Spills in the classroom boom whackers things like that yes how would you um you know you were talking about having making teachers become um Val to Value music like they do literacy and math how can you implement at um again how if you have push back from a teacher Who it is just like oh that's not my thing like if that's a requirement that you're going to make it's just not my I'm not going to how would you say to help them with that sure yeah I think part of it is understanding what

their push back is based on a lot of the time it's not actually about the music it's um often a kind of a psy psy psychological barrier around the work that's involved with creating lessons coming out with the ideas um what are What I think one of the most um under underestimated um things is the teacher's ability to be a to understand and the Art of teaching and to be able to understand the contextual importance of their classroom a classroom teacher understands the art of teaching better than anybody so they're brilliant teachers irrespective of the

subject or topic so it's about giving them the resource and the tool it's about to utilize that art of teaching it's about To teach music and I guess part of my work is going into schools and getting teachers to reimagine what music looks like because in their minds exactly what you said they think they're going to have to up there and play the recorder for three blim I that's the reality of what we're you know looking at but when you get them to realize actually we're going to activate your art of teaching to deliver something

that you're going to be feeling really great about that Your kids going to love it's going to be fun and it's going to completely reimagine the students behavior and the experience around music in the classroom um using really great songs that you probably listen to on your Spotify playlist when you're at the gym then suddenly it becomes a lot more engaging and they're open-minded to try it that's uh that they're the things I think about but maybe do you want to add to that being a teacher and working in an Environment where you know you

have a lot of colleagues who are fearful of teaching music right yeah um yeah and I guess that um some of my the co-workers that I have that are not might not know how to play an instrument and everything like that um there's maybe a bit of a hesitancy to teach music but the way they do integrate it is just by showing them different songs cuz everyone loves music everyone listens to music and then we do have other teachers at her school That are musicians I know there's another teacher she brings in her guitar um

so the way I do it I do very like low prep like I'll teach them kind of like what a chord is what a minor chord is that's just from like my own like background knowledge in music like maybe like what tempo is like this is what we can do right I I I I can see how teachers think they they because of the way our system is built they have they think about the expectations that Comes with that and that is a daunting task to add to their ever so long task of things so

that's a thank you um before I go um I do have a Qi code that kind of TAPS into a little bit about what you're asking about um with the work I do with amp Arts is a a company that my wife and I created that reimagines what Arts looks like in the classroom basically built around removing the fear of integrating the Arts into every classroom so that no Student misses out and takes a Reliance their Reliance upon having a single subject music teacher at an elementary school um for schools about to deliver arts in

the classroom um thanks so much for your time also thank you so much for the people that asked questions got involved wanted to give us their thoughts because that's an important part of this experience because education is not going to be and especially through music is not going to Be something that's done by one person something that we all have to be part of the story and part of the movement and part of the Revolution um thank you so much for your time and uh stay in touch and can we all have a big round

of applause for our first timer to Texas Gabriella Garcia thanks everybody e e E e e e e e e e e e e e E e e e e e e e e e e e E e e e e e e e e e e e E e e e e e e e e e e e E e e e e e e e e e e e E e e e e e e e e e e e e E e e