On a recent Tuesday, a classroom at Tahoe Expedition Academy looked less like a science lesson and more like a hip hop show.
Music pulsed through the room as local rapper and producer Brandon Greathouse danced across the stage. In front of him, a crowd of elementary school students jumped and sang along.
The song was about herpetology, the study of amphibians and reptiles.
“Don’t leave me in the sun, too hot, water’s more fun. Turn up the noise!,” Greathouse rapped as students echoed the lyrics.
The performance is part of a program from Arts for the Schools, a nonprofit that brings arts education and cultural programming into classrooms throughout the Tahoe Truckee region.
The goal is to connect students to learning through creativity and live performance, said executive director Lindsay McIntosh.
“Arts for the Schools has been around for 41 years bringing cultural enrichment, visual arts and performing arts,” McIntosh said. “We do lots of assemblies of all different cultures and genres, and this one was hip hop themed.”
The organization serves more than a dozen schools across several districts in Northern California and the Sierra Nevada, offering assemblies that range from music and dance to visual arts and storytelling.
Sometimes those performances even blend with traditional subjects like science.
“I asked Brandon [Greathouse], ‘Can you write about herpetology?’” McIntosh said. “And he said, ‘What’s that?’”
Greathouse said he approached the assignment the way many artists would, by learning the topic first.
“She told me it’s the study of amphibians and frogs,” he said. “So I looked up some facts, started making beats, and the songs came out great.”
Dance is another big part of the performance. Dancers help bring the show to life, including Lily Faye, a local high school senior who has been dancing since she was three years old.
“It’s just so fulfilling,” Faye said. “Some of the students I teach are in the audience yelling ‘Miss Lily!’ and running up to hug me. Seeing their joy makes everything worth it.”
In a mountain region better known for Olympic skiers and snowboarders, she said the arts can offer students another way to express themselves.
Over the course of five days, the program brings eight live arts assemblies to schools across the region, reaching hundreds of students in the Tahoe Truckee Unified School District.
Many of the performances are designed around environmental themes.
“We are commissioning new works that are all about ecology and something we call ‘eco literacy,’” McIntosh said. “So not only is music and having cultural experiences important, but we also ask artists, musicians, dancers and visual artists to create work about the environment.”
For Arts for the Schools, the idea is to keep expanding those experiences, pairing artists with classrooms and finding new ways to bring creativity, culture and even science to life for students.
