(New York, NY—May
4, 2016) Robert Dillon, Language Arts instructor for High Tech, has been accepted
into the Rock and Roll Forever Summer
Teacher Workshop taking place on July 13th -15th, announced Dr.
Joseph Giammarella, Principal of High Tech.
Only a
handful of teachers receive acceptance letters from the Rock and Roll Forever Summer Teacher Workshop each year. Spearheaded by rock ‘n’ roll musician Steven
Van Zandt, known to millions as “Little Steven,” the guitarist/vocalist of the
E Street Band, the most popular lineup on Bruce Springsteen’s albums and concert
tours, the program responds to fears that rock and roll may become “an
endangered species.”
"[Rock] was really
starting to become hard to find," Van Zandt says grimly, referring to the lagging
popularity of a musical genre that shaped generations since the 1950s.
Dillon,
a nine-year veteran of the Hudson County Schools of Technology community, recognizes
that rock ‘n’ roll, as a musical form, serves as a gateway to substantive and
meaningful analysis of cultural issues explored in Social Studies, Language
Arts, Music, and other subjects in the Humanities. The standards-based program empowers
educators like Dillon to pilot the curriculum, which encourages students to
become more adept listeners and critical thinkers.
“As
a rock aficionado and person who takes teaching very seriously, I look forward
to finding new ways to mix rock with my English classes,” an enthusiastic
Dillon states.
The
Rock and Roll Forever Foundation sponsors professional
development events for teachers, incorporating the curriculum in the Teacher
Workshop, and promotes the project on a national scale through its partners,
Scholastic, Inc., the National Council for the Social Studies (NCSS), and the
National Association for Music Education.
