FULLERTON, Calif. – The Rock and Rock Forever Foundation is flying the principal and teachers at Orangethorpe Elementary School in Fullerton for a weekend in New York City. 

The educators will be recognized during the foundation’s annual gala on Saturday, Nov. 23. This comes after the foundation chose the elementary school to be its TeachRock Program flagship partner school. 

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The TeachRock Partner School Program is designed to provide an immersive experience for both teachers and students. The program uses rich multimedia materials that are always offered free of charge. 

The program was created by a team led by Steven Van Zandt, a legendary guitar player. The program includes lesson plan collections and resources that can be found online to help teachers engage students by connecting the history of popular music to classroom work across the disciplines.

From social studies and language arts to geography, media studies, science, general music, and more: TeachRock has engaging and meaningful arts integration materials for every classroom.

The Fullerton School District assigned Dr. Ginger Frady to be the principal of Orangethorpe Elementary School last year. Dr. Frady says early on at her new campus, she realized the students on her campus weren’t being exposed to much art.

“If we don’t give them opportunities for many ways to learn, we’re doing them a disservice and we’re not empowering them and not showing them that there’s so much in the world that is worth learning about,” said Dr. Frady.

Recently, TeachRock hosted a challenge for invitations to its gala. The foundation asked students to film a 30-second video explaining why their teachers should be invited to the gala.

“We knew that Orangethorpe was going to be talked about at the gala because we are the first school, but we didn’t think we’d be able to go and be a part of the process,” said Dr. Frady.

A class took on the challenge with help from the members of the school district.

“Within 24 hours of shooting the video showing why the kids and teachers love TeachRock, we just found out on Tuesday that we won,” said Dr. Frady.

So not only is Orangethorpe Elementary School is going to be honored at the gala, but now the school will have their teachers representing them on the big night during that recognition,” Dr. Frady said. 

For more information about TeachRock, please visit: teachrock.org