Increasing student achievement, deepening engagement,
and expanding learning!

Imagine using poetry and puppets to study endangered species, or drumming and dancing your way through history! This is exactly how students in A4L's GET smART and Teacher Resource programs have fun with creative learning! The school day is the easiest place to achieve the goal of integrating art into learning. During this time, students become a captive audience, and the student/teacher relationship grows!

A4L trains teachers on how to apply art principles into the state-required core curriculum. Teachers are taught how to further motivate students with a hands-on approach and in an enjoyable manner. A4L's in-school program, from pre-K to 12th grade, increases student achievement, deepens engagement, and expands learning as partnership between the teacher, parent and community by integrating the arts. These goals are based on research proving that learning occurs only when a student is engaged and has a strong sense of community.

The history and process of art-making engages students in inquiry, knowledge acquisition, critical thinking and problem solving. When delivered effectively, these teaching methods inspire students' desire to learn and, as a result, help students build literacy, math and science skills, and acquire knowledge of history, geography, and current events.

Early Childhood Programs

Connecting young children of all abilities to a healthy start in learning!

Remember when you first learned to love books, colors, shapes, and sounds? This time is usually traced to a moment when you were engaged in play. Young children (and adults!) learn this way and Arts for Learning integrates visual art, dramatic play, creative movement and music into the early childhood classroom to promote sensory, cognitive, and social development in Miami's youngest children.

In 2005, Arts for Learning and VSA arts of Florida partnered to develop an arts-based program to support literacy and school readiness for pre-school children in Miami-Dade County. Using the Start with the Arts resource book created by VSA arts, Arts for learning provides professional development workshops for early childhood educators to teach them how to connect the arts to story time. To support teachers beyond the training workshops, Arts for Learning offers each of the participating pre-schools resident teaching artists. The teaching artists lead students in activities, support the teachers in the development of their own arts-integrated lesson and become a resource and partner for the entire school.