Students at Rutherford Elementary paint J.T. Tasch’s car in May 2024. Photos: J.T. Tasch; Tyler Allix
J.T. Tasch has been teaching at Stillwater’s Rutherford Elementary for 23 years (mostly fifth-grade math) and has zero desire to slow down. “I love showing up every morning, and I can’t wait to see the kids,” Tasch says. “My life is filled with smiles and inspiration because I get to hang out with kids all day and be a part of what they’re doing.” Tasch’s positivity and creativity infuse everything he does—including his night and weekend gig as an electronic dance music (EDM) show promoter and DJ.
Tasch was classically trained on violin and viola as a kid and immediately found his “thing” in music. “Hopefully, we all find our niche,” he says. “And for me, it was orchestra and skateboarding.” After moving from Appleton, Wisconsin, to Minneapolis for college in 1990, he attended a show at First Avenue. “The energy and influence the DJ had was really similar to how you would perform in an orchestra—just with different music,” Tasch says. He started DJ’ing at clubs around the city and for a local radio station in 1991 and launched his independent music promotion company, Sound in Motion (SIMshows), in 2002.
One summer, after the radio station he worked for was bought out, Tasch worked at a summer recreation program for kids, and realized he’d found his next “thing.”
“I thought I should explore teaching,” he says. “I loved it. Twenty-four years later, here I am.” SIMshows is still going strong, and Tasch devotes his nonteaching hours to running the company and playing his own DJ gigs.
J.T. Tasch poses with the crowd at a performance at The Armory in 2021.
He brings his nontraditional path and business experience to the classroom too. “Our education system is so built around reading and math, and yet kids have talents so far beyond that,” Tasch says. “I’m in this position where I can see kids for who they are, and I try to guide them to … understand they have unique talents that they can own and build and, ideally, create a powerful future with.”
Something Tasch has found in both a fifth-grade classroom and at EDM shows is a strong sense of community. “I want to see my students succeed individually, and I also strive to help them come together as a collective,” Tasch says. “I’d like to believe that we can raise children to become open-minded and proactive parts of a community.”
Tasch has a pretty rad springtime tradition to wrap up the school year with his fifth graders: He lets them paint his car. (Yes, his actual car.) “It started when I was in high school when some of my friends covered my car with stickers,” he says. “I just thought, maybe I should let my kids paint my car.”
Every year, he buys a vehicle on its last legs (fully intending to drive it just for the year) and lets his students go to town with their brushes and imaginations. “For me, selfishly, it was so amazing to feel like I had a piece of my kids with me, even after they left my class,” he says.
The car painting project is a reward that must be earned, collectively, by the class, and Tasch says it’s a stellar motivator. “It’s a privilege,” he says. “We come from different backgrounds, and we’re here every day in this class together, working together.”
Find J.T. Tasch’s upcoming DJ shows and more at simshows.com.
