Rockademix is a non-profit educational program offering a thematic teaching method developed by a veteran classroom teacher. The program uses music, the arts, and technology to help children learn academics, experience personal growth, and gain marketable skills. It’s based on original songs rich in history, science, math, and language arts content. Students and teachers mine the songs for academic lessons and implement related visual and performing arts and technology activities. The needs of all students are met through participation in singing, reading, writing, dancing, and art.

Students learn better when material is presented in an engaging, meaningful way that involves their active participation. Music and the visual and performing arts can unify the different strands of academic learning into a cohesive theme that all students can more easily digest and embrace. With “The Constitution Song”, for example, students study the document’s history, create drawings related to the time period, choreograph dance moves to the song, and perform the song with their peers. The students then write about what they learned in their personal anonymous blogs.

Jon Schwartz taught grades 1-6 in elementary school for 15 years. When he started using music, technology, and the arts to teach, his students’ learning, personal growth, and engagement increased dramatically and his pioneering teaching work was featured by the US Department of Education. Schwartz is taking a break from teaching to develop the Rockademix curriculum with parents, students, education consultants, artists, and musicians so that all teachers can use his methods regardless of their level of training in music, the arts, and technology.