What can be learned from two films with "rock" and "school" in their titles, about rock in school and about music and schooling more broadly? "School of Rock" (2003), a "family comedy," and "Rock School" (2005), a documentary, provoke a range of questions, ideological and otherwise, surrounding the inclusion of rock in formal instructional programs. This article offers a critique of these films from the position of music teacher-practitioner, beginning by highlighting a tension that emerges in them between understandings of music as process and music as valued cultural object, a significant issue in music education debates surrounding the inclusion of popular music. In this article, the author examines how the films, in different ways, approach this issue through their respective portrayals of the ways the music teacher figure fundamentally conceptualises both music and education. Through analysis and discussion (touching on the qualities of the music teacher, changing roles of teachers and students and the future music classroom), the author draws from the films a model for teaching rock music which he believes has potential implications for how all performances might better be approached in school. He discusses this model--of rock music taught as and through praxis--in relation to emerging findings of recent research on informalisation and personalisation in music learning applied in school contexts (the kinds of learning practices associated with the transmission of popular and other non-"learned" musics). (Contains 5 notes.)