Independence Charter School
Craig Waxman is an experienced music educator and manager with a strong background in various educational and business settings. Currently serving as a Music Teacher at Independence Charter School since April 2015, Craig previously held significant roles such as General Manager and Music Director at School of Rock Philadelphia, where enrollment grew from 25 to 120 students without a marketing budget. Craig's experience also includes teaching at Temple University as an Artist in Residence, directing orchestras and bands at MaST Community Charter School, and managing sales and customer service at Jacobs Music and Sam Ash Music. Craig holds a M.A. in Music Theory and Music History from Penn State University and a B.S. in Music Education from West Chester University of Pennsylvania.
Independence Charter School
Independence Charter School (ICS) is a community-oriented public K-8 charter school located in Center City Philadelphia. At Independence Charter we provide our students with an intellectually stimulating and internationally focused curriculum emphasizing the arts, languages, and world cultures. Recognized nationally for our innovative global studies program, we are the only Philadelphia school to deliver an integrated curriculum that uses world cultures and second language acquisition to introduce and connect content disciplines. We strive to develop a bilingual, interculturally competent, high-achieving student body. All students at ICS study Spanish within two distinct programs: the Spanish Enhanced program, which includes 30-40 minutes of Spanish language instruction daily; or the Spanish Immersion program, in which students begin Kindergarten with 90% of their day taught in Spanish and 10% in English. By fifth grade that balance is 50/50. By the time they graduate, ICS students are bilingual and biliterate in Spanish. Independence Charter serves over 800 students from almost every zip code in Philadelphia. Students are randomly chosen through an annual blind lottery. Independence Charter was founded in 2001 by a group of parents and community members devoted to raising their families in Philadelphia. These founding members developed ICS’s mission and program, and many remain instrumental today as parents of current students and in founder seats on our Board of Trustees. Teachers ICS could not achieve its results without our energetic, talented, and caring teachers. They bring to life our approach to cross-thematic teaching and they embody our international focus. Our teachers come from Venezuela, Colombia, Spain, Ecuador, Dominican Republic, Mexico, Argentina, Guatemala, and the United States, to name just a few represented countries.