Cool School Music is the exciting musical collaboration of Candy del Castillo, an experienced elementary school teacher with a Master's degree in Early Childhood Education & Mark del Castillo, guitarist from the award-winning Latin/Rock band, DEL CASTILLO Together they create modern music for the elementary classroom! Kids & teachers will BOTH love to sing along while they learn math essentials, alphabet and vowel sounds, science concepts, such as states of matter & seasons, and many more!

My teaching style is focused, fun, and engaging. I try to meet the needs of all the learners in my classroom.

My biggest rewards and honors come from my students!

Texas A & M University- Bachelors of Science in Psychology Texas State University- Masters of Early Childhood Education

Candy del Castillo, an experienced elementary school teacher with a Master's degree in Early Childhood Education, loves to use music as a teaching tool to reach the children in her classroom. However, she soon realized that there was much more music available for pre-school and kindergarten children than for her 2nd grade students. Also, the topics were not always suited for most 1st and 2nd graders, as they typically learned their ABC's and basic number counting in kindergarten. Though there is definitely a need for songs on those topics, she felt that songs on subjects such as states of matter, seasons of the year, counting by twos, fives, tens, counting quarters, etc., were missing from many educational cds. Candy discussed this with her husband, Mark, who is an accomplished guitarist in the professional international touring band, Del Castillo. Mark went to his recording studio and decided to write a song about the seven days of the week. Although this topic was not geared specifically for 2nd graders, Candy was surprised at how much her students enjoyed and responded to the music. She then gave a copy of it to the daycare at school, as well as teachers in kindergarten, 1st, & other 2nd grade classes. The response from all grade levels was extremely positive. Even the 2nd graders, who were "too cool" to listen to a kindergarten song, were requesting to hear it over and over! Inspired by the reactions from her students, fellow teachers, and their own children, Candy & Mark began to collaborate on more songs. Thus, Cool School Music was born! Mark del Castillo has written & performed on many songs that have appeared in soundtracks for several movies, so he was used to writing music that appealed to various age groups. Mark states " I want to write music that teachers would want to listen to even if they didn't have the ABC's, math essentials, or other educational topics as the lyrical content." He began to write music that was not only educational, but fun to listen to for both the children AND the teacher. After all, the teacher will be listening to it every year! The songs he created had modern sounds and professional production that was current with what children & adults were hearing on the radio. Both Candy and Mark come from families of teachers and educators. Candy's mother & several aunts & cousins are teachers. Education has always been a huge part of her family culture. Mark grew up in an educational household as well with both his father & mother being an elementary principal and teacher, respectively, for over 50 years. His oldest sister has also been teaching for over 25 years. This family of educators provided Cool School Music the perfect testing and research environment. The family members would take copies of Cool School Music to their own classrooms and provide essential & immediate feedback for what types of songs & musical styles kids were connecting to. Some teachers also requested for Cool School Music to write about topics that were not normally put to music, such as learning about communities or the water cycle, to name a few. (These will be coming very soon!) What you hear in Cool School Music: Volume 1 is what the kids and teachers are already learning: That educational music for the classroom can be COOL!!