Hot off the heels of getting an honorary doctorate and releasing his first solo album in over a decade, Steven Van Zandt is not slowing down. His Rock and Roll Forever Foundation has announced a collaboration with the New Jersey School Boards Association. This cooperation comes in the form of art based STEAM curriculum.
It comes through the Rock and Roll Forever Foundation’s TeachRock project. New Jersey has long had a focus on STEM, Science Technology Engineering Mathematics, but they are adding the A for Arts. This new piece of the curriculum will push innovation and critical thinking, along with other core ideas.
This curriculum and the materials that go along with it will be provided to school districts, and teachers are no charge. This fits with Steven Van Zandt’s commencement speech at Rutgers– “But your generation will put art back in the classrooms and back as an essential part of our quality of life for all of society.” It will be an interesting to see if this curriculum gets expanded in the future and if the eventually larger rollout will expand to a nationwide level.
