BRUNSWICK, Ohio — Get Your Teach On, the educational movement energizing the K-8 teaching community, hosted the second annual Rock Your School Event on Sept. 19.

Educators across the country were invited to participate by creating an outside-the-box educational experience designed to engage their students and bring learning to life in their classrooms.

Participants in “Rock Your School” try something new in their curriculum, or challenge themselves and their students in new ways while knowing they are not alone — they are joining a community of teachers worldwide who are all challenging themselves to find new ways to engage their students.

Students at St. Ambrose School in Brunswick were welcomed to school with rock music to set the tone for an energetic day filled with problem-solving, critical thinking and creative learning experiences.

Principal Lisa Cinadr and Assistant Principal Chris Dziedzicki, along with teachers, dressed like rock stars and led students through a fun and engaging school day. Secular and Christian rock music was used during the day as part of problem solving in the classroom, as well as to energize the students between classes. It was a “rockin’” day!

Some of the classes included Social Studies/Math, where students created astrolabes and used them outside to measure locations of buildings, trees, etc., and to gauge distance and patterns.

In a Math/Science/Health/ELA: Project Lead the Way experience, students acted as real-life medical detectives as they researched and analyzed medical data in the Medical Detectives program.

In Math/Science/ELA/Music, students wrote an inequality based on the fact of applying between 15,000 to 18,000 pounds of pressure to crush a cubic inch of natural rock. They then searched for other inequalities in the natural world and wrote and graphed their own inequalities.

In Religion/Music/ELA, students were introduced to Christian rap music. Students created their own beats and Christian rap songs on Soundtrap, as review and reinforcement of content-area learning.

In Elementary Grades ELA/Music/Religion, students wrote about why they are a “rockin’” child of God and what makes each of us rock stars. They also sequenced a story onto piano keys.

In Math/Music/ELA, concert escape rooms were used to practice math place value concepts and addition facts and problem solving.

The Art/Music/ELA/Religion class let students designed musical instruments to create worship music.

ELA/Math students enjoyed “Italiano Ristorante,” where they created their own pasta dishes and pizzas and edited restaurant reviews.

ELA/Social Studies/Math kindergarten students were detectives who read and used critical thinking skills to solve an important mystery.

And Tech/Science/Social Studies students used virtual reality goggles to “travel” to Mount Rushmore to enhance their study of Earth’s systems and geography.

Cinadr said, “Every day at school should be a rockin day of teaching and learning, but today’s focus gave us opportunities to stretch ourselves as educators as we try to stretch our students to deeper and more-relevant learning.

“At St. Ambrose School, we R.E.A.C.H.! We are Resilient, Empowered, Accurate, Creative, Harmonious. I am so proud of our creative and collaborative faculty and staff who proved yet again that students grow, thrive and achieve when they are given the tools THEY need to learn and master educational standards. We thoroughly enjoyed this day,” she said.

In 2018, thousands of educators from more than 1,000 schools participated in Rock Your School. GYTO received entries from schools in all 50 states, plus entries from Canada, Australia, the Cayman Islands, Honduras, Brazil, Norway and the UAE.

Musical artists Paul Stanley (of KISS) and Nick Lachey (of 98 Degrees) supported Rock Your School, hosted in 2018 at Laurence School in Los Angeles. In fact, the band 98 Degrees has filmed a video to help spread the word.

Co-founder of Get Your Teach On, Hope King, says: “Our mission is to engage as many teachers as possible, who in turn will engage and inspire literally millions of students. It all starts with us. If educators feel inspired, we can be the difference in a child’s life. We can help instill the joy of life-long learning in our students.”

Read more from the Brunswick Sun.