Emily Langerholc
Emily Langerholc is a music educator who actively explores connections across a wide variety of music makers and musical traditions. She is currently in her 18th year of teaching music in public schools across Florida. She has taught middle school band, chorus, adaptive general music, and high school music history and currently teaches elementary general music. She is passionate about the inclusion of popular music at all levels of the academic music curriculum and is also a specialist in woodwind instruction.
She is currently a doctoral student at the Center for Music Education Research at the University of South Florida. Her research interests include popular music in K-12 settings, musical imagery in families, and technology’s influence on music preference. She holds prior degrees from the University of Central Florida and the Florida State University. Her interest in the overlap between academic music and popular music began in her undergraduate years, having written an Honors thesis about parallels between French composer Erik Satie and alternative rock band Sonic Youth. In her master’s degree program, she began compiling prominent examples of music theory concepts heard in popular songs.
In 2016, she started the Rebel Music Teacher blog to continue compiling songs for this project. She hopes to keep making connections between popular music and academic music through her writing and her teaching. Her work gained notoriety on social media, even getting an inadvertent shout-out during Lizzo’s Hot Ones interview in 2022. Guide to Teachable Features in Popular Music is her first book. When she is not teaching, writing, or practicing, she spends quality time with her family & friends or comfort-watches Gilmore Girls for the hundredth time.
Find Emily:
eBooks by John Doe
Posts by John Doe
Research to Practice: Using Data for More than Just Grades
I used to think that research was complicated and couldn’t help me in my classroom. I used to see the Music Educators Journal arrive in my mailbox, flip through, sigh, think to myself – “If I only had time….,” and then add the issue to a growing pile on my dining room table. [...]
Musicast Episode 3: Lucky Chops – Streets & Stage: Funkifying Music Education
Lucky Chops has been unleashing high-energy brassy funk on the world since forming in NYC in 2006. The intensity of the band’s energy is fueled by their desire to share the healing and inspirational power of music with others. That power has resonated with audiences around the globe, giving the band hundreds of millions of views on their online videos and leading to live performances in more than twenty five countries. Lucky Chops maintains a busy schedule touring across several continents. [...]
Musicast Episode 2: Wanda Vasquez Garcia – Equity and Expectancy
Wanda is currently the general music teacher at the Escuela Bilingüe Pioneer in Lafayette, Colorado, and the children and youth choir director at First Congregational Church of Greeley, Colorado. As a K-5 music educator, she believes music is a very effective way to learn about cultures. [...]
The “New Normal”: Silver Linings of Going Back to School
Silver Linings I’m an optimist at heart, so some of [...]
Musicast Episode 1: Williams Goldsmith – “Dreams Don’t Work Unless You Do”
Williams Goldsmith is a 17-year-old guitarist, producer, and singer from Massachusetts. He started out playing rock and metal music, but in recent years has gotten more into pop, R&B and hip-hop. He has independently released an EP and 3 singles of varying styles, reflecting his varying music taste. He hopes to innovate and one day leave a lasting impact on the music world. [...]
The “New Normal”: Teaching Music to Students with Special Needs in Pennsylvania
Have you ever had a year like this year? I [...]