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Packed inside a small classroom at Sebako Primary School in Botswana, 30 schoolchildren watched as 12-year-old Aitan Grossman hooked up speakers and booted up his laptop.

He had come to teach them a song. And he left a rock star.  

“I never thought of myself as a music teacher,” says Aitan, who was in Africa last October helping his sister, Tatiana, open libraries at several schools. “It was nice getting to teach them because they were completely lost without me — song-wise.”

Aitan recorded the students singing the chorus of what would become his song, “100 Generations.” In its finished form, the Earth Day–inspired tune would be the start of something special, with the potential to reach millions of listeners worldwide.

To get an idea of Aitan’s love for music, all you need is a quick stroll through his parents’ home in Palo Alto. There is a piano or keyboard in almost every room. Aitan perches on a wooden stool as he plays the piano, filling the living room with the sounds of Journey, his favorite band. He knows “Don’t Stop Believing” by heart.

“Growing up, Aitan couldn’t walk by the piano without sitting down and playing it,” his mother, Lauren Janov, says, adding that Aitan could also hear songs and play them by ear. “He was always humming, always tapping. It was clear from the beginning that he had some internal beat toward music.”

His bedroom might just be the only space without his preferred instrument. Instead, Lauren carefully removes an electric guitar from its case that Aitan and his father, Mark Grossman, built by hand. A practice drum set flanks one side of Aitan’s bed. As you exit, Green Day frontrunner Billy Jo Armstrong and his band stare from a large poster hanging on the wall. 

Aitan, whose family belongs to Congregation Beth Am in Los Altos Hills, knew he wanted to incorporate music into the project for his Sept. 12 bar mitzvah. Initially, his goal was to organize a multi-act concert on Earth Day similar to Live Earth, only with kid performers filling the bill.

KidEarth never got off the ground. Conversations with former Palo Alto Mayor Larry Klein and Palo Alto school superintendent Kevin Skelly about the logistics of putting on such an event left Aitan feeling overwhelmed. He decided to scale back the proposal and focus his energy on the creation of one song.

To get inspired, he stared at the lyrics from Woody Guthrie’s “This Land is Your Land.” The famous folk ditty was unlike the rock ballads and gritty punk he listened to regularly.

Sure, the 1940s tune mentioned some of the country’s most beautiful natural wonders, but Aitan needed a song about the earth that would make his friends turn off Kanye West’s latest single and pay attention.

But the lyrics would come later. While tapping the keys of his electric keyboard, Aitan decided to create the tune first, which he admits is “not the best way to do it.”

“I had decided on the chord progression, and I was listening to that over and over again,” Aitan says. “I kept improving it until I found the tune I liked.

Thanks to family connections, Aitan secured recordings of the chorus from school children in Paris, Venezuela and Ethiopia. He also worked in-person with Taiwanese students who happened to be visiting the Chinese American International School in San Francisco.

He then pulled some of his classmates at the Nueva School in Hillsborough away from Guitar Hero to play the music. Aitan organized a few practices with his band — a guitarist, bassist and drummer — in a friend’s basement. He and his sister sang the lyrics. 

While recording took place in several locations, the final mixing of “100 Generations” was completed using the program Garage Band on Aitan’s computer. And forget the demo tape: He sent the song to Amazon and iTunes, just in time for this year’s Earth Day. 

Proceeds from the sales of “100 Generations” will benefit two charities that Aitan selected: Alliance for Climate Protection and World Wildlife Fund. Janov said roughly 50 copies of the song have been purchased, but she could not provide a figure to go along with it because of a “lag between sales and reporting,” she says.

Though sales have been a bit slow, KidEarth has attracted the attention of two prominent figures — former Vice President Al Gore and Ellen DeGeneres.

“The Alliance for Climate Protection put me on their Web site,” Aitan says. “Al Gore saw it and he listened to my song. We got a copy of an e-mail that said he liked it.”

“The Ellen DeGeneres Show” contacted Aitan for a possible guest appearance in the fall.    

To help spread the word about the project, Aitan designed a Web site, http://www.kidearth.us. He even e-mailed last season’s American Idol winner David Cook, Journey lead singer Steven Perry and four-time Grammy Award winner Carole King to get them involved with the project.

King was the only one to respond, offering Aitan advice about selecting charities.

As for Aitan’s advice to other kids who want to help the planet, he keeps it simple: “Be creative and you’ll go big.”

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