The Art Rewards the Student (A.R.T.S.) program brings teaching artists into the classroom for repeated visits to work with students on a long-term project. Students also visit the museum to see the current exhibition, which is woven into their classroom experience by the teaching artist. At the end of the semester, student work is shown in the SVMA simultaneously with the current exhibition. Over multiple years, we conducted detailed group interviews with classroom teachers and with teaching artists about program impacts on students and logistics. All teachers agreed about the powerful, positive impact that this art program has on children, citing many moving examples. Conversations generated creative ideas, e.g., using a Visual Thinking Strategies approach to helping children explore art materials. Both sets of teachers imagined many ways to gather evaluative data by weaving reflection time into each session.

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