Whatever it Takes.

Bill Carbone:
Tom Morello, thank you so much for joining us at the Stand With Teachers event tonight to celebrate, the work that educators have done in 2020 and the work we're doing to keep the arts in the DNA of the school system and so much more.

Tom Morello:
Well, thank you very much for having me. My mom was a public high school teacher in Illinois for about 30 years and I've taught some guitar myself, in my time. And so, teachers and their contributions to society are not only near and dear to my heart, but are a part of my DNA.

Bill Carbone:
So one thing that really jumps out to me about that story is that you described the town as archly conservative yet your mom comes into the school and can bring in African studies and can bring in a concept of being anti-colonial and introducing imperialism. Do you think that would still happen? Do you ever go back to Libertyville?

Tom Morello:
I haven't been back to Libertyville. It's archly conservative nature to some degree. When I was growing up there, when I was 13 years old, there was a noose in my family's garage, there was a Klan presence in Libertyville. They did recently have a substantial Black Lives Matter rally this last summer, which was attended by a thousand people. While there have certainly been some changes there they probably began with Mary Morello's teaching.

Bill Carbone:
So Tom, I recently saw you talk with somebody at Rolling Stone and I think I heard you use the phrase cognitive dissonance several times. And, I think that we live in a time where I'm surprised right now to hear that your mom was able to go to that school and teach these things. Cause I wonder if it would be that way in such a place right now. I'm wondering if we live in a time that seems to have actually multiple realities happening along the same time. Which I think may be some of the cognitive dissonance that you refer to. I wonder if you could tell me a little bit what you mean when you say cognitive dissonance and what you think, an educator like your mom then, or an educator in the presence might be able to do to help us grow out of our cognitive dissonance a little bit.

Bill Carbone:
Yeah. Critical thinking. That's what we all need. And I think that's a really good way to think. I want to cue up a quote from your new book, “Whatever It Takes”, which I think is just beautiful and wonderful. We've all read it here. You say in the book, “the world is not going to change itself. That is up to you. The people who have changed the world in radical, or even revolutionary ways are people who had no more money, courage, power, influence, or creativity than anybody watching or listening to us”. So I want to use that quote to introduce a couple of people that I think are world changers. We all need Vince Spencer and Gabby Fullana.

Tom Morello:
Hello guys.

Bill Carbone:
Tom, in “Whatever It Takes”, there's another quote that just jumped out at me. You say “There's never been a successful social movement in the United States without a compelling soundtrack”. That's totally true. But separately, I also heard you say bands like the Clash, you connected with you in a way that teachers and adults never did and helped you shape an informed worldview in a different way. And I wondered what it was about those artists that reached you in the way somebody else might not have.

Bill Carbone:
That's so great. I think I'm pretty sure everybody in these four boxes we have all had some experience like that. And I wondered, Gabby, what is a song or some of the music on your soundtrack and what's happening in your classroom. Is there a way that those things are connected?

Gabby Fullana:
A lot like Tom, I was the only person of color or one of very few in school growing up, I went to private school, my whole life. My parents, they came from nothing, so they busted their butts and it was brought up to them, if my child has a quality education, they will succeed. They will be better than us. That was the goal. Do I exist in this echo chamber of conservatism and Catholicism and you know, cognitive dissonance. Right? So, I remember always questioning the teachers and they would get so mad at me. Because I wasn't just agreeing and I wasn't complicit. I was never a quiet, complicit student. Music was my education. Literally Rage Against the Machine and bands, just like you guys taught me that my suspicions were correct. Learning this stuff is wrong. This is what we should be doing, fight for the voiceless. It's really your music that got me super civically active. I was going to all these punk shows and these hardcore shows, not only being the only chick, but one of the few people of color, especially back then, seeing people of color on the stage saying what I believe in, I just associated with you guys so much.

Bill Carbone:
Gabby, can you tell us a little bit about the goals of your teaching right now and what you're doing in school and how some of that might tie in?

Bill Carbone:
Vince, I think that's a pretty solid segue to you. This concept of what are people's stories? Because you work very much in storytelling, don't you?

Vince Spencer:
Yes, I do. I've been working in a film, TV and comics since 1999. I do a little bit of everything from storyboards to concept art, to comic books. Whatever it is when it comes to visual storytelling. I can pretty much do it. I've been working with NY Edge, who's a partner of TeachRock since January 2020. I'm able to bring my expertise to these kids and utilize some of the tools that I've had that make stuff happen.

Bill Carbone:
What are some of the tools that you've used Vince? Can you think of a specific example? 

Vince Spencer:
There is a cool team that I hooked up with for virtual teaching, Katie who is at NY Edge, Leo who is a music teacher and myself as the visual arts teacher. Together there were some cool things we were able to do. Animation is 50% sound and music and 50% visual animation.  I believe that a marriage of visual and audio storytelling is something that all kids need to be exposed to. And the trio of us use a lot of TeachRock lessons. We're able to come up with classes that show kids how soundtracks influenced visual storytelling in a lot of movies that they watch and engage in. Furthermore, how to compose soundtracks for a mood that they're going to be married to something visually. So it's a lot of interesting abstract things like that I'm really interested in showing the kids. When you say comic books or films a lot of people think about the shots they think about the dynamic, the drawings, what not, there's a lot of music under there. And one of my favorite movies, “Collateral” has an AudioSlave song, in there and when Tom Cruise and Jamie Fox wait in the cab and it wills go across. When that song plays, there's no dialogue in that scene, but that says so much, it's a poetic moment in and of itself that if it was dialogue, it just couldn't say what it said with the same amount of power. So I love that kind of abstract storytelling, the marriage of music and visuals.

Bill Carbone:
So when, when you're working with kids doing this work, some even as young as elementary school kids... they're so far from some sort of professional thing. So what kind of skills or big picture life skills do you think they're learning?

Vince Spencer:
Oh, that's a big question. One of the things I love about NY Edge is they hire a lot of professionals who are actually doing this stuff. The people who are teaching these kids, the skills that they have are not the people that are teaching theory. We're literally giving them tools that we use every day in our careers to make things happen. So one of the tools that I've developed over the years being able to do so many things is that I think of stories, storytelling in a really abstract manner, and I'm able to pass that on to the kids. So for example, as opposed to teaching them how to draw something correctly, I teach them how to plan their mood via color scheme, via the music they listened to or when we'll pull in the stories that they want to do and all these kinds of things. So it's not just teaching them how to draw or how to compose music. It's teaching them how to think abstractly and on a conceptual level. And these are, these are the kinds of tools you can take with you anywhere. Even if you don't become an artist, let's say you're a person that's putting together a meeting for your office, the tone, the color of your powerpoint, the music that you put behind it are things that are going to matter and make it happen. And so these abstract storytelling things that I'm infusing in these kids and getting them to think about is not just about the art that they want to say, but the many different ways they can say it.

Bill Carbone:
Most definitely Tom, most definitely. Gabby, how do you feel like you are living that take the power back moment in your teaching? 

Gabby Fullana:
Yeah. Gosh, this is my wheelhouse for sure. So given what I do, I work a lot with students who get in trouble, right? Getting in trouble often. They're mostly minority students. I actually have been taking data for my school about the racial inequities and discipline. Obviously the goal is to get rid of the traditional discipline that most schools do. I'm also addressing the fact that students who are not people of color get different sorts of punishments than white students, and trying to work with the teachers to recognize that and it's pretty wild. Unfortunately it happens at every school. It happens everywhere. I lived it. Everyone in my family lived it. So I'm really, really proud and excited to be able to be the squeaky wheel at my school. It is what it is. But the flip side is it needs to be fixed and addressed. And let people kind of know what's going on. It's not like they're doing it on purpose. I'm working with these students and reminding them that the teachers are only human. The teachers don't know what they don't know and they're imperfect and it's important to build relationships with them, have conversations because without uncomfortable conversations you're not growing. It's like a really big part of what I do every day. 

Bill Carbone:
Vince, I know that you have been teaching, at least since the pandemic started the TeachRock lesson about the five elements of hip hop. What kind of experience have you had teaching that in New York City to students?

Vince Spencer:
You know, Tom, one of the things that helps me propagate that and helps the kids get that is I lean heavily on Bruce Lee's three stages of Kung Fu when it comes to teaching art. The first stage is falling in love with it. That's when you basically chop bricks in half and kick holes in doors. The second stage is learning the forms. That's when you're standing in a horse stand for eight hours and making your hands bleed, hitting the wooden man. And the third stage is falling in love with it all over again, because after you fall in love with it again because that's a stage that isn't easy, you know. Understanding the tenants, playing those chords up and down that thing, fretboard, eight hours a day, isn't easy. But then you realize the love that you have for it. You've got the muscle memory of all those forms and you that's when the real poetry stuff happens.

Bill Carbone:
I love that because it really applies to everything. It could be math, it could be writing, it could be a sport. It could be music. That's the beauty of it. We started that conversation with the idea of your centric, education and Vince I just wanted to ask you do you think that using the five elements of hip hop with the kids you were working with but had been trying to teach that artistic mastery through a Renaissance art or a Greek sculpture instead, do you think you'd get the same buy-in?

Vince Spencer:
It all depends on how I flip it? We're teaching online virtual and I've got this philosophy that these kids are turning off TikTok, and leaving YouTube to turn me on. So I've gotta be able to bring it. So here's a way to slip competitiveness. There is a way to flip any lesson. If it's about Greeks sculptures, you can flip it to make it hot. You can flip the Renaissance to make it hot. It's all about the imagination.

Bill Carbone:
I'm going to actually improvise a question here because it occurred to me, Tom, that you probably have distance learning happening in your life right now, don't you?

Tom Morello:
Yes. I have a nine and 11 year old.

Bill Carbone:
I assume their schools were shut down since last March because of coronavirus and one of the big things with tonight's event is that we're celebrating the teachers who are teaching during a pandemic without any training and doing it so well. I'm just wondering what has your experience been like watching the schoolroom come to your house and what have you learned about teaching from being on that side of it?

Tom Morello:
Yeah. It's a tale of two cities because in the Spring of last year, our school was very unprepared for the change and it was absolute chaos. It was not anything that we could describe. The only learning we were getting was how to be frustrated as a family and how to try to avoid relationship implosion within our household with the way that it was going. Fortunately there's some very smart people involved and they figured it out over the summer so that my kids are now engaged during the day. We have my 97 year old mom and my 89 year old mother-in-law here. So we have been on house arrest for eight months. We don't go out of the house. No one in and nobody out is our way of keeping the old folks safe. This has changed the parental teaching dynamic considerably. The kids are not able to tussle around with their friends like they do. So weâ€ve tried to find ways to be creative. My youngest is nine-years-old and has become a fairly spectacular guitar player during this time because we've spent a lot of time on it. We had to get over the barrier, that initial barrier that I got, he had that same barrier too. It hurts my fingers. I don't sound like I'm playing stairway to heaven after five minutes. I hate it. But for me to be able to find the educational route, to make it nothing but fun. And so in a parallel education to his academic one, he's now self identified as a guitar player and is advancing. My 11 year old has discovered the opposite sex. (Laugh) It's an education for all of us in a different way. Let me just say I need to sign up for somebody's course on how to deal with that.

Bill Carbone:
Thatâ€s great (Laughing). Let me toss the question to you guys who were on the other side of that screen. What have you learned about teaching or about families and students as you've tried to navigate this mess that 2020 has been?

Vince Spencer:
I might be in a unique position here because I kind of lucked out with the timing of it all. I've taught before, but I always taught someone in a studio not in a traditional classroom. In terms of actually having the title teacher, I started in January of this year, so I didn't have a lot to unlearn. It was basically you've got these ideas. How do you best convey these ideas to be able to teach your students through a screen. To me it was just another lesson, as well as anything else. I didn't have to unlearn anything. And then I realized this virtual teaching thing provides you a lot of freedom to do a lot of different kinds of teaching.

Gabby Fullana:
The academic side is a little different than that. 47-50% of our students opted for full-time online. So the students who are in-person are in-person full-time. What we ended up having to figure out was how to navigate both. I have teachers in my school teaching the in-person students with their iPad and laptop on and teaching the online students at the same time. They are monitoring a chat while engaging with students in person, but not being allowed to walk near them. Literally everything we've been taught of how to successfully teach we're not allowed to do anymore. We can't go up to them, check on them, make sure they're okay. We can't whisper in their ear. Hey, come out in the hallway, I'll help you. It's really interesting. I feel like we're doing really well in my school. I just know burnout was really, really high this year. I actually sat with one of my students in her Spanish class and just kudos to my colleagues because she's a rockstar in and of herself. I was in her classroom, she had a zoom class turned on, she had her PowerPoint going. She was addressing all of the students at once taking attendance while doing a really cool engaging exercise while she's also managing two rosters at the same time. But not only that she taught the native speakers their own curriculum, as well as the new Spanish One students. So she's literally teaching four classes at once all while engaging, and they're all having a great time and it's amazing. The students appreciate it. It's great, but it's not sustainable, unfortunately. So I think that an online learning course would be very valuable right now.

Bill Carbone:
I think that's a perfect place to close. First of all, online learning, maybe not the course, although we have some of it, but certainly all the content is at our site and that's why we're here tonight. We have so much distance learning materials, so much material online for teachers and students. And, and this has been for our foundation just a wild year. We've had at times almost 400% more people engaging with what we do than we have had in previous years. For me personally, that we went from being an awesome idea that was something for progressive teachers and highly motivated teachers to engage with because they wanted to bring in new content and think beyond the textbook to becoming something that's an essential resource this year is great. Itâ€s a pretty big deal. I really wanted to thank the three of you guys for joining us today. Vince and Gabby, I'm really in awe of your work with kids. I think that you guys completely embody the quote from Tom's book, Whatever It Takes: “The world is not going to change itself; that is up to you”. I think you guys, the work you do is the work that's going to make that difference. And Tom, you are an inspiration to everybody on this call today, as well as I'm sure pretty much everybody who's going to watch and read this article out there in the wide world. So thank you so much for taking the time to come and have this conversation with us today.

Tom Morello:
Thank you. Thank you very much for all that. All of you. Thanks. I really appreciate it. Happy holidays to everybody. Good luck to us all.