John F. Kennedy once said, “Peace is a daily, a weekly, a
monthly process, gradually changing opinions, slowly eroding old barriers,
quietly building new structures.” Crossing boundaries whether physical or
mental and changing opinions is a challenge created from the environment and
societal beliefs. Finding a way to build a bridge across those boundaries takes
patience, understanding and a passion for what you believe in. Carol Anne
McGuire found a way to build such a bridge and used her creativity to build it.
Recognizing the need for peace in an every changing world of chaos, Carol Anne
found a way to utilize communication, collaboration and music to connect
students from across the world in an effort to build a foundation for peace.
Carol Anne is a passionate educator with a creative
background in music. This partnership of passion and creativity is what gave
her the inspiration to build a bridge to peace called Rock Our World (ROW). ROW
brings students from every continent together to collaborate on music,
film-making and special projects. ROW was founded in 2004 as a way to bring
together students from around the world to learn, share and build an
understanding of each other. Building peace through the use of music is not a
new concept, and ROW is not the only organization with this goal. Groups like
the Sonic Peacemakers attempt to bring peace through music; however, they
utilize singers and musicians from around the world to promote peace. ROW is
unique in that it gathers students to collaborate through music to understand
human and cultural differences which allows for students to grow in their
acceptance of those differences. The understanding and the acceptance are what
will lead to a more peaceful world.
Rock Our World is an innovative, collaborative,
international challenge based learning project. Students from around the world
work together to create music, movies and to participate in a worldwide webinar
family night. Each year ROW has a focused theme to assist the participants in
learning about each other and their cultural differences. The themes have
ranged from “Getting to Know You” to “Healthy Eating and Sustainability” to
this year’s challenge, “Rocktography.” In this year’s challenge for learning,
students are using the camera to capture smiles around the world. The images
are being uploaded to flickr and shared as a way to build communication and
understanding without words.
Although themed projects are completed each year, the main
focus for ROW is to build a foundation of peace through the use of music. The
school year begins with each participating group creating a 30 second drum beat
utilizing a digital music creating software called Garage Band. Every Friday,
the music file is passed on to the next school in a different country where a
different instrument is added. As the recorded music passes from one school to
the next, a song begins to form. By the time the song file returns to the
originating country, it has been impacted by students from all over the world.
Students put aside their differences and cross their physical and mental
boundaries to collaborate on one goal: the creation of a song. Each time the
song is passed from one group to the next, a video chat is conducted which
allows for the students to meet each other and ask questions to learn more
about who is collaborating to create the song. By including the video chat in
the process, students are learning about other cultures, their differences and
are able to confirm and deny societal stereotypes which allows for students to
build a bridge of understanding. Rock Our World has been impacting students from all over the world for almost 10 years. By engaging students from around the world in a collaborative effort to create music, students have learned to cross their societal and physical boundaries. Students learn to understand, work together, see beyond their differences and create an environment of peace. As they share their creations with adults and continue to build connections around the world, they are beginning to have a positive impact on peace. The students who participate in Rock Our World are building a world of peace by creating their own collaborative community and using music as their connection.
Visit Rock Our World at http://www.rockourworld.org/ to learn more.
