"Without the Access for All grant this residency would not be possible. All of our children deserve these opportunities. Thank you." Morag Bradford

The issue is always how to make the most of limited time and resources with students. How can an educator multi-task and reach multiple learners in multiple ways at one time? How do you impact a child's life in 45 minutes or less? As arts educators, we decided to create our own program to introduce our students to the world outside of Baltimore. The result is Worldview, an Arts Integration Program with a focus on tolerance. Worldview was created to introduce our elementary and middle school students to cultures around the world, and to lead them in making connections between their lives and their culture of study.

Each year, a country and culture is selected as a focus of study. Activities teach visual and performing arts skills while connecting to other areas of the curriculum, and involve community partners like Young Audiences.

Research has shown that when students have an emotional connection to the material, the information is retained longer and is seen as more meaningful by the learner. The arts foster that emotional connection. We believe that by meeting with classroom teachers to dovetail our activities with what is being taught in language arts, math, or science, we are engaging our students and deepening their understanding of the concepts taught in these and other subject areas.

Our students were immersed in studying India this year. We discussed the connections between Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King, and made miniature paintings, a community mural, sculptures, and puppets. They also listened to music, learned traditional Indian dances, and greeted each other with 'Namaste'. To see all of these experiences and more, please visit http://worldviewprojectindia.blogspot.com.

Our schools were very excited to hear about YA's Access for All grant opportunity, which provided us with the funding for our artist-in-residence experience with Lakshmi (YA roster artist). Many schools are reluctant to commit their money to the arts, especially ones that have arts teachers and feel their tight resources could be better spent. Access for All enhances arts education. Our students got to work with professional artists with specific specialized skills. It's interesting, it's exciting, and the classroom or art teacher got to work with the students in a new way-almost as a participant in the workshop along side the students -- this was a bonding experience.

We know that programming from YA's Access for All is something that can really bring a school together. Even if the whole school does not have an opportunity to participate in the program, often the opening or culminating event is something the whole school can participate in. The program is also something that can inspire teachers across the curriculum. For example, when Lakshmi came to our schools, the P.E., social studies, and language arts teachers were all there, and each created lessons from the experience to then take back to their respective classes and students.

We find that today's classroom is often boring and somewhat ineffectual. There are so many good teachers that have many good ideas, but they are hindered by textbook utilization guidelines--too much testing, and so much documentation that they do not have enough time to really find fun ways to teach.

High stakes testing does everyone a disservice. Learning has a lot more to it than academics, and to appeal to all kinds of learners (visual, auditory, kinesthetic), we need field trips and guest speakers and arts integration-as much interaction with the 'real world' as possible. This is difficult if the student's progress is purely measured on test scores. How about measuring how much joy the students find in the school day?

Teachers who integrate the arts in the classroom find that their kids have better retention of the material and are more engaged. All teachers should participate in the arts in some way, but only with proper training to make sure it is valid and supports the lessons in meaningful ways.

If we are to succeed in our goal of having our students become lifelong learners, we need to reach each child in a way that inspires them to learn to see themselves as part of the community in the big picture sense. This encourages them to become a valuable contributor to life in general, and an individual with a multitude of possibilities in their future, not constrained by their geographic or economic circumstances. The arts helps them accomplish this by allowing them to solve 'elegant problems' with infinite numbers of correct answers. The arts are areas of success for the academically gifted and academically challenged alike.

Every time I make an example of a product, I am outdone by my students; their bag puppet is infinitely more charming than mine, their painting more expressive, for while my example exists to demonstrate the technical process, their work is creative and playful. I know we are onto a good thing when kids seek me out to ask for supplies to take home to 'make more'. When our kids ask where the visiting artist has gone and when they are coming back. When people come in from 'outside,' it's a real demonstration to our students that they are important enough for people to be interested in them. When we make community projects-a mural or a puppet show -- and the students take pride and ownership as a cooperative group, that's a great thing to see. We love it.