Ross Elementary School is bringing education to the next level for its students with Rockademix, a nonprofit K-5 educational curriculum that uses music to teach academic subjects like science, technology, engineering, the arts, and math, also known as STEAM.   Click here to see a video about Rockademix.   Stacy Neuman, Ross Curriculum Coordinator, has been looking for a long time to find a program that helps kids learn academics through music, and she thinks she’s found the answer in Rockademix. Neumann states, “Rockademix is amazing for our students. They love it! After 28 years of teaching, it’s nice to see an intelligent program like Rockademix. I want to be able to teach the whole child, and that’s what Rockademix lets me do. It reaches their kinesthetic, musical, and auditory needs and is academically rigorous.”

Ross Elementary is located in a historic location in Topeka, Kansas; it’s just down the street from Monroe Elementary, where  the landmark Brown vs. Board of Education case desegregated US public schools. Ross is a culturally-diverse K-5 public school in Topeka, Kansas with over 600 students, and over 90% of it’s students are economically disadvantaged.

Rockademix was created by Jon Schwartz, an award winning California public schoolteacher with more than 15 years experience teaching grades 1-6, whose work was featured by the US Dept. of Education. It was developed with the help of Grammy Award winning musicians, professors of education, choreographers, artists, and child development professionals. (Click here to see some of the program’s contributors).

While the content was being created, 40 kids ages 4-12 used the program in the free after school Rockademix program. Their input helped shape the program components.  All of this collaboration and hard work has created a special approach to learning that meets all of a child’s educational needs.

Teachers, administrators, and students at Ross Elementary have embraced Rockademix whole-heartedly, and have given rave reviews of the program. According to Kyrstin Bervert, Ross’ Assistant Principal, “Students were doing Rockademix, on their own, for recess and says to me that they are really liking the program.”   Since children learn in different ways, Rockademix engages students on several different levels in an effort to produce long-tetrm retention. Stacy Neumann noted that the Rockademix approach to learning really benefitted her students with emotional or behavioral problems; they were more focused and more engaged than they usually were in the classroom. “As a teacher, it’s exciting to be able to see kids get excited about learning,” says Neumann.

With reviews as good as the ones from Ross Elementary, Rockademix is eager to get its material in more schools as soon as possible. They are currently searching for schools or individual classrooms, serving children in grades K-5, who would like to pilot the program free of charge from January to June 2016. You can watch an informative video about Rockademix and its pilot at Ross Elementary by clicking the links below. To get information on using Rockademix, contact them at 760-450-3735 or through their website:

https://rockademix.org and https://rockademix.org/contact/