To All Teachers (and Springsteen Fans): The Top 10 Springsteen Songs to Teach and Why!

(This is tough to limit to 10…so I cheated.) 

1. “We Take Care of Our Own”: This is a great way to gather the kids around you and point out that in your classroom, in this school, in our country—you have their backs, and they have each others’. Look at that flag and remember, despite our faults, Americans step up even if the government may fail.

2. “The Rising”: 9.11 is this generation’s Pearl Harbor. Springsteen’s album thematically takes us on those fire trucks to the Twin Towers in “The Rising”; to the day after 9.11 “Empty Sky”; to the weeks that follow “Countin on a Miracle”; to the grieving “You’re Missing”; and ends with an uplifting echo that life goes on at “Mary’s Place”. (This is the presentation I’ve delivered.)

3. “The River”: This is a heartbreaking diary of teenage passion and its unintended consequences. (Ask me for materials.)  

4. “Land of Hope and Dreams”: At a time when some feel America is on the decline, this anthem reminds students that their nation is the envy of the world and a place where all people are (or should be) accepted. Dreams can be realized—as opposed to differed. (Ask me for the power point.)

5.  “41 Shots, American Skin”: Tom Robinson is riddled with 17 bullets in Harper Lee’s “To Kill a Mockingbird.” This song, inspired by the police shooting death of Amadou Diallo, reminds students that ‘Black Lives Matter” –as do all lives, including the police, school children, and victims of sexual abuse. (The video of this song at Madison Square Garden is a knockout.)

6. “Wreck on the Highway”: Paired with Karl Shapiro’s poem “Auto Wreck”, students see tragedy from two opposing points of view. Both end hauntingly with a reminder—“there but for fortune.”

7. “The Ghost of Tom Joad”: I taught The Grapes of Wrath as a film. Springsteen’s song puts the 1930’s into context today, as poverty and homelessness remain timeless, as is the need to step up and help.

8. “Devils and Dust”: The storyteller has “his finger on the trigger” but he does not know whom or what to trust. America’s soldiers are placed in untenable situations in the Middle East. A compliment to novels like Tim O’Brian’s The Things They Carried.

9. “Thunder Road”: For years I taught the film Dead Poets Society, which focuses on the romantics verses the realists. I loved experiencing this song in the round, with the classroom darkened with only a single candle in the center. I would ask the kids, ‘Would you get in the car with the protagonist at the end of the song?’ The message is clear: it’s never too late to find love, but it is also a leap of fate.

10. “Born to Run”: (Spoiler alert!) This is how I ended both my teaching career and a novel—so read no further (unless you’ve read Meetings at the Metaphor Café)! Again, theater in the round. Kids standing on desks. Last day of school. As their teacher, I encouraged my “tramps” to soar. To “climb out on that wire”, hug their soulmate, and find that “runaway American dream”.

The Encore…naturally.

11. “Secret Garden”: I loved teaching this song with Catcher in the Rye. Holden’s relationship with girls and the understanding that there are places in a woman’s heart and soul that he is not welcome. Springsteen, like Holden, knows those places remain secret, even as a teardrop falls on a checkerboard.

13. “My Home Town”: Written in the ‘80’s, Springsteen’s song predates the Great Recession, but its setting is visually powerful. Its characters evolve from children to parents. The cycle begins anew. (Note:“Death to My Hometown” is the modern version of what the film The Big Short chronicles. The carpetbaggers have ripped off the innocent bystanders, and nobody pays for it on Wall Street.

14 “Born in the USA”: It’s an angry anthem about what America’s Vietnam Veterans went through in war and when they returned, as they “end up like a dog that’s been beat too much/ so that you spend half your life just covering up.” The irony lies with the indisputable fact that they were born in the USA. (Ask me for the power point.)

15 “Frankie Fell in Love”: I’m enamored with this song, and it riffs so well with Romeo and Juliet.  It captures the bliss of falling in love, and the fact that Einstein and Shakespeare make cameo appearances is the cherry on the top of this delicious dessert. (Ask me for the power point.)

That's How I see it at the Metaphor Cafe.