By Rai Sandhu, Greenwich High School Class of 2025
Inside Cardinal Records: How Greenwich High School’s Dr. Barbara Freedman turned a class project into a game-changing experience
When you walk into the Electronic Music room at Greenwich High School, it’s easy to get swept up in the buzz. Students are hunched over keyboards, bouncing ideas across desks, and ducking into the studio booths. But what you’re witnessing isn’t just an Honors class—it’s the engine room of Cardinal Records, a student-run record company born from one teacher’s vision to transform how music is taught and experienced.
Dr. Freedman, a veteran educator with 28 years of experience in the classroom—24 of them at Greenwich High—had one mission: to deeply engage students in the process of creating music from start to finish. “ I was trying to figure out a way to deeply engage the kids in honors music by doing a piece from beginning to end thoroughly and completely,” she said. “The only way you can do that is to collaborate. And I really honestly don’t know how the idea came to be.”
What began as a creative spark soon evolved into something more ambitious—a simulated record company with distributed roles, prizes, and deadlines. But this wasn’t about going viral or streaming millions of plays. Dr. Freedman was surprised to learn that most students weren’t even asking about putting their music on Spotify or other streaming platforms. “It wasn’t about that. It was the game element, the collaboration, the challenge—that’s what drove them.”
Drawing on a PhD in educational technology, Dr.Freedman leaned into game design principles, or “gamification,” to motivate students.
She asked, “How can I make a game out of this? And it’s not a board game, it’s not a video game, it’s not, but it’s how do you make a game? The only real way to engage anybody in a game that they may not want to be in is to offer prizes. So that took it to this level.”
What really made Cardinal Records stand out wasn’t just its innovative design. It was the way it pushed students out of their comfort zones. Every participant was required to collaborate with at least one other person. For some students, this meant overcoming shyness or learning to trust someone else’s creative process.
“There were three kids in the class who struggled to collaborate, just didn’t want to, ever, because of their shyness but, you know, we worked it out together, and we helped get them in the right direction.”
While other schools may run student music labels or release projects online, Cardinal Records did something new: it turned the entire process into a structured, immersive, and motivating experience. That difference hasn’t gone unnoticed. Dr. Freedman is scheduled to present the project at education conferences this summer, potentially making it a national model for how creative arts programs can evolve.
While the experience was transformative for the students, it lit a new fire in the teacher, too.
“As you get older, you kinda want to do less,” Freedman admitted with a laugh. “But this idea just felt so right. I actually told my evaluator this year that this game was going to be my professional development goal. And honestly? It’s the single best thing I’ve done as a teacher.”
That’s saying something—Dr. Freedman is also a published author with a best-selling book through Oxford University Press and years of international teacher training under her belt.
The secret recipe? Letting students lead.
“When I first started teaching music tech, kids had almost no access to this kind of technology. I mean, when Logic came out, it was $1,000 a copy. Now, everyone’s got a DAW (digital audio workstations) at home. They walk in already knowing how to use Logic or Ableton. My job is to harness that to teach each other, to let them grow together. That’s what this was all about.”
Cardinal Records may have started as a classroom experiment, but it’s quickly become something more – a blueprint for the future of music education, thanks to a GHS teacher inspired to think outside the box.