Planning and True Grit
Scheduling
A Common Vision
Achieving Instructional Goals
Added Value

Trust and commitment top the list of attributes that make the SMARTArt partnership successful. As Coordinating Partner for the Project, CML President and CEO Tessa Jolls works closely with administrators of three partnering organizations [Graphic: Organizational Chart]:

Louis Carrillo, Principal,Steve Schullo, Teacher and Technology Coordinatory, and Bonnie Blitzstein, Teacher and Overall Track Coordinator for the Project at Leo Politi Elementary School (Los Angeles Unified School District, Local District 4),

Denise Grande, Director of Strategic Initiatives for the Los Angeles Music Center Education Division (MCED), and

Clifford Cohen, President of Hollywood's AnimAction, Inc.

"We all bring something different to the table," says Cohen. Media literacy training workshops and support for SMARTArt's teaching team are managed by Jolls and CML media literacy coach Jeff Share. Grande, who engineered the structure of the SMARTArt program with Jolls, establishes the schedule for connecting residency artists with teachers to bring workshops in the arts into the classroom. Cohen's organization provides technology training and production, addressing the grant's stipulated violence prevention theme by having students produce animated public service announcements.

The team collaborates to ensure that the Project's integrated curricula meets both the objectives of the grant and the instructional goals of Local District 4 of the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) and Leo Politi Elementary School, where the SMARTArt media literacy project is implemented.

According to Jolls, a major factor contributing to the success of the Project, "is that the partners work so well together. They really put the interest of the project first," she says. "That makes a big difference."

Planning and True Grit

"Initially, we knew this was a pilot, we knew it was an experiment," says Jolls. "So we determined what we wanted to find out: 'Is there a relationship between media literacy and the arts?' 'How do we integrate them into the elementary curriculum jointly?' It was an unknown," asserts Jolls, "so we went in with 'Let's try and see how it might be possible.'

I think we've got a lot of answers along the way," Jolls says. "Yes, definitely integrate media literacy and the arts into the curriculum. There's a strong relationship there."

Throughout the three-year Project, Jolls, Share, Grande, Schullo, and Cohen held informal planning meetings among themselves and staff, and scheduled periodic meetings with Carrillo to seek advice and resolve issues. "We sit around and eat biscotti and plan for the best strategies," Cohen says casually." Grande says, "We brainstorm and chew on different issues, such as 'Are we on track?' 'What are the challenges?' 'What needs to be fixed? And if it can't be fixed, how do we continue to make progress?'"

In addressing what is working and what's not, "there is always the element of trying to foresee and avoid potential problems," Grande explains. "A lot of it is proactive. But there's also a lot of assessment along the way: 'Where are we?' 'Is this where we want to be?' It's hard work," she says. "It's really important to have partners you trust and respect."

Jolls agrees. "Implementation is hard; to make something stick in schools is very difficult. You have to have true grit," she says. "You have to dig your heels in and say 'I'm not going away until this happens.' Because if it doesn't happen in the classroom, then we're all wasting our time."

Scheduling

A major difficulty in implementing the Project was scheduling. Because it's a year-round school, Leo Politi Elementary has three alternating teaching tracks.[Graphic: Multi-Track Scheduling] "There are always two tracks on and one track off," explains principal Louis Carrillo. Teachers working on the same track keep organized through a SMARTArt Track Coordinator. An Overall Track Coordinator represents the Project teachers' voice to school administrators and helps coordinate facility planning, financial and other matters in meetings with Jolls and Carrillo.

In 2003, MCED's Patrice Cantarelli was responsible for scheduling all the artists' classroom visits. It's complicated because six artists teach the visual and performing arts disciplines to students in 16 Project teachers' classrooms, and each artist presents four-to-six sessions. "The different tracks make scheduling incredibly complex," Jolls says. "The Music Center is genius with the logistics they have to do."

Once the MCED schedule is set, Grande and the Overall Track Coordinator, Bonnie Blitzstein, review it with the Principal so there are no overlaps in scheduling, such as arranging to have a dance class in the auditorium during band practice.

A Common Vision

"With so many partners," Jolls says, "we all had different ambitions, yet at the same time a common goal. The Five Key Questions in the CML MediaLit Kit™ give everyone a focal point, a common vision of what the mission of the Project is. And it provides a key integration piece for all curricular areas."

Jolls explains how the integration works. "The questions are the one thing that's consistent," she says. "You can be teaching language arts or math and integrate the Key Questions." According to Jolls, "this has emerged as the strength of using a media literacy approach. And the great thing about it is that it's really a meta-frame; it can be applied in and outside of school."

"We want teachers and students to have an automatic questioning process when they come across any media or any message," says Jolls. "The Five Key Questions are a starting process for them. Teachers will later learn that these questions are only the beginning...but they're a really strong beginning."

From the standpoint of starting a media literacy program in a school, Jolls notes that it is "important to have a focal point that sounds clear and doable, and that provides a common vocabulary, so everybody is on the same page. It's like an agenda for a meeting," she says. "It helps people see where they're going, gives them a way to get there, and gives them a common way to discuss issues and solve problems. It provides a common basis for action."

Achieving Instructional Goals

Because the Los Angeles Unified School District is so large, serving nearly 12 percent of California's entire school population, it has 8 local districts to enable more direct communication with schools. "District 4 has approximately 3,000 teachers," says Superintendent Richard Alonzo, "and in every one of its 67 schools more than half of the children are English learners."

All of Local District 4's resources and efforts are focused on five areas: literacy, math, English language development, intervention for children falling behind, and parent involvement. State content standards and Lauren Resnick's Principles of Learning guide theory and practice throughout the schools. "Literacy is something we have been working on consistently for the past four years," Alonzo emphasizes. "Literacy through all the content areas; literacy in terms of students being able to read and write and comprehend what they're reading, and being able to understand literature through a variety of different means."

He adds, "To me, that includes the literacy we have around us through print, television, motion pictures, and technology. I see Project SMARTArt as being part of this effort to make sure that kids are literate, and that they are able to function in society."

Alonzo asserts that "by maintaining our focus and not waiving from it, our schools have been able to make significant gains. Our Limited-English-Proficiency and Hispanic populations have hit state and District growth targets for the past five years." In FY2001/2002 eighty percent of District 4 schools met their Academic Performance Index growth figures. In FY2002/2003, ninety-three percent did, "and Leo Politi was one of them."

Principal Carrillo points out, "anything we bring into the school is filtered to see where it fits and how it furthers our goals in each of the five areas. For example, media literacy fits in very nicely," he says. "We wouldn't have media literacy in the school if it wasn't working hand in hand, and sometimes enhancing, what we're already doing around those goals."

Added Value

Carrillo contends that "the media literacy Key Questions are very natural, they're very meaty. So you can build a whole theme around them and still do all the curriculum." As Luiz Sampaio, District 4's Arts Education Advisor, observes, "the strategies and conceptual ideas from the media literacy project become a focal point for other curricular units that the teachers are using."

Superintendent Alonzo thinks Project SMARTArt "adds more benefit and more value to the programs we have on teaching to the standards, and to our Open Court program, which has gotten us very good results with student achievement. But there has to be room for looking at things in different ways.

Teachers need to have some freedom," Alonzo says, "to incorporate other aspects of the curriculum-whether it's the arts, or whether it's science, or technology-that will enhance the effort for kids to learn how to read and write, but do it in ways that might be more interesting."