William Rood

Rood’s innovative teaching idea, “Performance Recording,” is focused on expanding the school’s music program by obtaining better quality video equipment and creating a video editing station in the music room to give students hands-on experience creating and editing musical video. Plainfield Central Middle School has an above-average music culture — with more than 50 percent of students involved in the band and chorus and more than  90 percent of students in a music class — but more students would like to be involved in the success of the music program offstage. Rood believes this will enable all students to be part of the music program, whether as performers, managers, videographers, photographers, audio engineers, video engineers or producers, and will encourage them to work as a team.