Arts Grant To Aid Youth Sharpen Their Creative Edge In Prince George's

Arts for Learning Maryland Awarded Nearly $4 Million in Grant Money from DOE

Arts for Learning Maryland announced the organization received a $3.9 million grant from the U.S. Department of Education to demonstrate arts-integrated school programs that improve academic performance and emotional well-being of students in low-wealth schools. Senator Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) informed Arts for Learning Maryland of the five-year $3,970,442 grant award to work with Prince George’s County Public Schools for Start with the Art: Arts Integration + Co-Teaching -- A Transformative Approach to Increasing Academic Achievement and Fostering Socioemotional Development in Elementary Students. Arts for Learning Maryland, a nonprofit organization that enriches the lives and education of 180,000 Maryland children each year through arts integration experiences, is the only organization in Maryland to have been awarded one of the 30 EIR grants in FY2021.

 The DOE Education Innovation and Research Grant – the largest in Arts for Learning Maryland’s 70-year history – will allow the organization to research, demonstrate and model the effectiveness of using arts and artists in Kindergarten through third-grade classrooms in Prince George’s County, Maryland. The project will establish and sustain collaboration between Prince George’s County Public School classroom teachers and Arts for Learning Maryland teaching artists as they plan and deliver lessons, including re-engaging students in the classroom following educational disruption precipitated by the COVID-19 pandemic.

 Start with the Art will incorporate four arts-integrated instructional strategies that have been demonstrated to foster the academic achievement and socioemotional development of students, particularly students placed at risk by poverty: using the arts to foster students’ engagement in the classroom; using arts experiences to allow students to experience a wider range of emotional experience than is often possible in regular classroom activities; using students’ experiences of setbacks and failure in their artistic work as a way to develop students’ perseverance; and capitalizing on students’ collaborative work to foster students’ positive peer relationships.

 As part of Start with the Art, classroom teachers will participate in a Training Institute offered as an extension of the Prince George’s Artist Teaching Institute (PGATI), a long running, highly respected summer professional development experience. Start with the Art will begin in early 2022 with recruiting the initial cohort of schools, classroom teachers, teaching artists, and instructional coaches who will participate in the pilot. The first program for students will be offered in Fall 2023, with a goal to engage 2,500 students in kindergarten through third grade who are living in or near poverty and are attending school in PGCPS.