Francisco Dean wants to teach life lessons through a musical lens, and in December, he used a Netflix documentary followed by a series of guest speakers to help convey the point.
After watching the Netflix documentary “Trainwreck: The Astroworld Tragedy,” detailing the deadly 2021 Astroworld Festival crowd crush, students in the Explorations in Music class spent two weeks examining the documentary from different perspectives.
Introduced this year, the two-week unit included six roundtable discussions, five of which featured guest speakers from Lab who brought their expertise: nurse Mary Toledo, health; director of safety and security Mike McGehee, law enforcement; history teacher Christy Gerst, law; learning coordinator Laura Doto, counseling; and dean of students Ana Campos, student culture. The structure marked a departure from the class’s usual single-day discussion format.
Explorations in Music teacher Fransico Dean said the documentary stood out for the broader life lessons it offered students, using music as a lens rather than a focus.
“There’s lots of things in that film, lots of things that took place at that event, even though it was a music festival,” Mr. Dean said. “Those are things that have nothing to do with music, that through this event, we can take away, and we can hopefully become better people. So I saw an enormous opportunity with that film.”
Instead of structuring the guest visits as lectures, Mr. Dean said he allowed each adult guest to guide the discussion at their own pace.
“I intentionally didn’t script anything,” he said. “The only thing I said was, ‘You have a background and/or an expertise in this field. We would like you to wear that hat when you come and when you watch that film.’”
Mr. McGehee said the discussion-based format allowed students to actively engage with the Astroworld tragedy rather than passively receive information.
“It was very powerful to hear from the students’ perspective and what they thought about what occurred and how they felt about how it was handled from the promotion and the concert management teams,” Mr. McGehee said. “I think it was just very interesting to get that perspective and to kind of understand how they process such a tragic event.”
For sophomore Zain Zaidi, the structure of the guest-led discussion made the project feel relevant beyond the documentary itself.
“I think for school it is very relevant because a lot of the people who are at the Astroworld concert were kids and students, and I know, especially with the Chicago music landscape and like Lollapalooza, it’s important to be aware of these sort of events,” he said.
