The Verve Pipe Surprise West Michigan Classroom [VIDEO]

Grand Rapids' rockers The Verve Pipe recently surprised Grandville High School students with a pop-up performance.

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If you grew up in the 90s like I did, you definitely heard their hit song "The Freshman". Maybe you even played their 1996 album "Villains" on repeat like I did... I've loved The Verve Pipe ever since! And it made my heart happy to watch video of the band playing for a group of high school students.

The classroom's teacher, Melissa Henkel, who works with students on the autism spectrum, helped the special performance happen.

She shares on the YouTube video,

I follow Brian Vander Ark on Twitter. A few weeks ago, he tweeted a short clip saying he and his bandmates crashed a local country club. I commented and said he was welcome to crash my classroom anytime. He took me up on it!!! My students LOVED it! If you hear extra vocalizations, that’s just my students with ASD expressing their happiness.

The longtime teacher and fan of The Verve Pipe tells Wood TV-8,

“They are a variety of cognitive levels. Some of them are non-verbal. When they walked in, (the students) were just wondering what was going on. A few of them went up and tried to touch the guitars and we said, ‘No, no, just wait.’ And they began right in and started playing and played a couple of songs and my students were just … moving in their seats, and you could hear vocalizations, and those were just really expressions of joy. They loved it.

After the performance, frontman Brian VanderArk shared about the experience on Twitter,

Aside from surprising local local students, The Verve Pipe have three performances coming up in Grand Rapids at The Listening Room. The band also just released a new album, “Threads", on Friday.