AboveandBeyond Records, an offshoot of AboveandBeyond Productions, is one place where kids find their voice.

All the songs and lyrics are created by students of mine. Kids, of course, love music. They talk about bands, singers and rappers, and about songs, videos and websites. They wear t-shirts with imprints of their favorite artist. They write the names of those artists on their notebooks, binders, and even skin. It's simply imperative that I integrate music into the curriculum. The kids connect literary work to their own compositions of instrumental music and lyrics to expand the framework of the literal text. And, more significantly, the students discover through unrelated, but natural fits, universal human themes in which they witness the common threads of humanity.