October 2007
	Pop Culture

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Real-life School of Rock

Mark Campayno, a music teacher from Sterling, Virginia, is much calmer than frenetic actor Jack Black, but like Black's character in School of Rock, Campayno teachers his students everything from Ozzy Ozbourne and Jimi Hendrix to the Beatles and Oasis. The spitting image of a young Rod Stewart, the rock comparisons don't end there for Campayno. Every year, this real-life "School of Rock" teacher leads 200 7th- and 8th-grader guitarists through classic rock tunes such as "Crazy Train," by Ozzy Osbourne, "Purple Haze" from Jimi Hendrix, and that revered rock epic—"Stairway to Heaven" by Led Zeppelin.

Most of his students have never heard of these tunes when they start the class, but within a few weeks they're showing off iPods loaded with the classic rock hits. At first, Campayno wasn't really fazed by the movie "School of Rock." Then, he thought, 'yeah, I'm taking that approach to get the kids hooked on the instrument,'" he says. Now he even plays clips of the Jack Black comedy in class. "This kids just all talk about that movie a lot," he says. "I showed a clip and they knew every word." And some of his students have followed the movie's storyline and written their own tunes.