With his wife and partner Tiffany Notch, Ronnie Notch innovated and runs Breach, formerly known as Notes For Life A&T, which has now used technology to teach music and life principles to millions of youths. From their home base in North County, they are among the region’s least-known, most-successful entrepreneurs. The American spoke with Ronnie about technology, music, education and the aftermath of the Ferguson unrest, where he was a steady presence behind the scenes helping to keep the peace and the young protestors nourished.
St. Louis American: What is new and upcoming with your ongoing entrepreneurial efforts in education and music? What is new and upcoming with you personally? What music are you making?
Ronnie Notch: At Breach, we’re looking forward to Summer 2023 and bringing our Lift Off residential experience back. Because of COVID, we haven’t been able to safely welcome students from all over the country to an area university since 2019 at Saint Louis University. To see where some of our past Lift Off students are now is confirmation that when you get the chance to do something crazy that no one else has done because of fear, do it. The university we’re negotiating with is an exciting and technologically advanced choice. We’re confident the students who are accepted will agree.
We’re also in year two of our Virtual Reality (VR) and spatial audio music creation curriculum called “Make Room For Music.” We believe it’s a large step in the direction that music creation and consumption is headed. By leveraging technologies such as VR and spatial and binaural audio, students learn about the future of sound design while creating in ways many of us have only dreamed of in the past.
That excitement has led Tiffany and me to create outside of Breach as well. We’re currently developing a VR experience that enhances the audience’s ability to absorb songs and albums. We’ve been working on this off and on since 2016, but have been making consistent progress since late 2019. Saying we’re excited to share this new work would be a profound understatement.
St. Louis American: Why music education? In the traditional school it’s often considered an extra-curricular and one of the first programs cut in a budget crunch.
Ronnie Notch: Tiffany and I have always looked at music as the universal language. Music transcends race, age, ability, etc. The community disconnect we often see can be mended via music – be it a concert, festival or performance.
When it comes to preparing the future generation of leaders, thinkers, creators and more, we must be able to speak effectively to them and in a way that meets them where they are when possible.
Since 2014, our company’s foundation has been music education. This allows us to introduce areas of tech and learning in a way that is captivating and easy to retain. Many times, our students don’t realize the skills they’re developing until student exit assessments are completed. I can say without a doubt that our curriculum has helped to shape the view of music education in many districts across the country. It’s no longer looked at as a luxury course or expendable. Our work isn’t finished, but we’re certainly well equipped for the global challenge.
St. Louis American: As parents of three, where are you sending your children? Do you trust the public schools enough to send them there? What can we do to make our public schools institutions we trust with our children?
Ronnie Notch: Before we had children, Tiffany and I made the decision to home school. We knew that was our journey before we were married almost 10 years ago. We both attended area private schools but also recognized the shift in American education.
Since then, we’ve developed an approach that most would consider “unschooling.” When we have meetings (or, now, virtual meetings), our two oldest children attend with us. They learn through experiences and we, as parents, learn what motivates and interests our children at various stages. Yes, they can retain information and read, solve math problems, and the like, but they’re also able to think collaboratively and individually, effectively communicate, utilize situational awareness, and display so many other skills that many 8- and 5-year-old children aren’t encouraged to do in a traditional school setting.
Again, it will sound cliché but, our public school systems have to first look at themselves as more than a K-12 childcare service. It is a thankless industry, and we can never properly show our gratitude for educators and teachers and district administrators, but what we can do is reshape the foundation that American education is built on. In fact, I’d go as far as to say we need to dismantle it and rebuild it.
We’re still learning in a way that was tailored for the industrial revolution. We keep children in schools for five days a week for roughly 40 hours a week which allows parents and guardians time to go to work. When parents come home they’re too tired to have a genuine interest in what children are learning. It’s not that parents trust the school systems – many times, they’re just too tired to examine what’s really going on.
Now, imagine this same scenario for the life of a teacher who is also a parent. They’re often times underpaid. They spend more time with other children than their own, which can lead to guilt, and, when something goes wrong, they’re blamed. In any other environment, we’d consider this an unhealthy workplace, but since education is vital to the American economy, it hasn’t been changed.
Schools train students to be responsive and reactive, not creative and proactive. In most schools, listening to authority is valued more than communicating, so it’s no surprise the level of crime we see amongst juveniles and young adults. They have no idea how to process what they’re feeling, let alone how to tell someone else how they feel and what they need.
If you want to change something, that change starts on the inside. If we were ever in a position of leadership in the public school system, our ideas would be shunned at first with great resistance because they’d appear to be radical. But we say: how can we afford to not be radical and brave when we’re talking about the literal future of our species?
I could go on forever about this, but this is why Breach exists. We exist because we believe we can continue to chip away at the outdated, unproductive approaches and rebuild the foundation of American education until it is strong enough to withstand a pivot that benefits every student, everywhere.
St. Louis American: Does the current labor shortage in the U.S. pose challenges for your projects? How are you responding to the challenge?
Ronnie Notch: In regards to Breach, the current labor shortage has caused us to continue to think outside of the box while doing so with a student-first approach. When we speak of labor in our industry, we’re speaking of our backbone, which is educators and teachers.
In 2017-2018, we began imagining a world where attending school in the traditional sense was optional. Not because we saw a pandemic on the horizon, but because of violence and shootings taking place inside of educational institutions. There were also illnesses and viruses spreading, and our parent population became concerned with sending their children to school at the risk of becoming sick. At that time, we were told that “students at desks in classrooms is something that’s never going to change in American and global education.”
Fast forward to 2020, and our company actually grew exponentially because many schools and districts were not prepared for what we at Breach call “expanding the classroom.” Between 2014-2019, we impacted roughly 1.5 million students globally through our Cre8ivate Curriculum. Since 2020, that number is now roughly 2.6 million and growing. Right now, we’re focusing on training quality educators, increasing virtual class sizes without compromising the effectiveness of the lessons, and introducing new career pathways to students while maintaining a nurturing and exciting learning environment.
St. Louis American: You were there at Ferguson making sure the front-line risk takers had water and food; you were one of my solid sources as a journalist. What is your take on some of the many outcomes of Ferguson, both big picture and particular people we saw evolve?
Ronnie Notch: When we drive down West Florissant or South Florissant Avenue, it’s hard to do so without thinking about August 9, 2014 and what happened over the days, weeks, and months that followed. Personally, I’ve had to grow from the anger I developed regarding some who capitalized from that tragic moment in time and molded it into celebrity. While being out there for a month straight, with Tiff and our son, we knew firsthand the danger and chaos that was alive and well there. So, to see accounts from the absent was a tough, and yet necessary, pill to swallow.
I’m now 38 and a parent of three, whereas then, Tiffany and I only had our son. Since then I’ve lost my father, brother in law and grandmother. I’ve lost friends and other family as well. Time has allowed me to grow and understand that everyone copes and even grieves differently. I’ve had to learn how to respect the grief and love the grief-stricken. I’ve also learned how to focus on the consistent: people like Tef Poe, Jami Dolby, Keith Griffin, the late Orlando Watson. Focusing on the ones who have consistently pushed the city forward selflessly is good for the soul and inspiring. I’m also happy and inspired to see one of my first role models, Flint Fowler, and his team’s work to make Ferguson better than ever. There are opportunities in Ferguson now that didn’t exist before, and I think everyone can appreciate that.
St. Louis American: What is some comfort music for you? Comfort food? Social medium of choice? Hobbies? Favorite video games? Sport rooting interests? Historic hip-hop grudges you’re still weighing in your heart?
Ronnie Notch: This is going to sound like an after-school program commercial but, to me, anything I choose to listen to is comfort music. That’s definitely not the same as saying all music is comforting, but at this point in life I work hard to only listen to content that works with my brain and not against it. That’s everything from the Sing 2 soundtrack to The Black Album to Pusha T. That’s not me knocking anything or anybody, I’m just very intentional with what I listen to these days and when I listen to it.
Comfort food is easy. Tiff has started baking from-scratch chocolate chip cookies, and I’d put them up against anyone’s, ha, ha, ha.
My social medium of choice is still Instagram but Twitter is still right there after 14 years of loyalty.
Over the last year or so, our family has really gotten into streaming video games. We have a Facebook gaming channel called NotchHouse. It’s our off season right now, but we’ll be back up and running in September or so. Favorite video games right now are Fortnite and NBA2K22.
I’m always going to be a Lakers faithful, even when we miss the mark badly like the 2021-2022 season. And it goes without saying, I’m a Cardinals diehard.
Hip-hop grudges that still land me in debates to this day are 2Pac v. Biggie and No Limit v. Cash Money. There are others but those two historic conflicts are never ending from many perspectives.
For more information, visit https://www.thisisbreach.com or email inquiry@thisisbreach.com.
