Though he’s best known as a founding member of Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band, for years now Stevie Van Zandt has devoted much of his time to TeachRock, the free educational initiative he launched in 2006 geared toward K-12 educators and students.
He’s about to get help with the program from some of the biggest names in music. TeachRock has formed an Artist Council that includes Erykah Badu, Common, Sheryl Crow, Peter Gabriel, Norah Jones, DJ Khaled, Skip Marley, Darryl McDaniels, Melle Mel, Margo Price, Rapsody, Gina Schock, Marty Stuart and Taboo.
The musicians on the Artist Council will participate in lesson plans and work directly with students and educators using the curriculum. Additionally, they will engage with their fans to spread the word of TeachRock’s mission. They join Bono, Jackson Browne, Martin Scorsese and Bruce Springsteen, who are members of TeachRock’s Founders Board.
“This Artist Council is the culmination of the outreach we’ve engaged in since establishing the Rock and Soul Forever Foundation and its TeachRock.org program over 10 years ago” says Van Zandt in a statement. “The Artist Council is an important step toward our long-term goal — keeping the arts a vital part of public education by creating and distributing an innovative, transformative, and effective methodology for new and future generations, ultimately leading to drastically improved high school graduation rates. Our dream is that one day every artist will take the opportunity to visit a classroom, whether locally or on tour, anywhere in the world, and participate in a lesson plan using our curriculum. By adding the 14 talented musicians making up the Artist Council to our network of 60,000 teachers and 19 partner schools, we have made a significant step toward making this dream a reality.”