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Home > Programs > Minneapolis > Advocate Profile
 An Interview with Dr. William Green, Superintendent of Minneapolis Public Schools.
Why should the arts be integrated into learning other core academic subjects?
The reality is that quality education must include the arts. Participation in the arts allows us to discover and nurture strengths of students and they also open doors to self discovery. Arts create student success and meaning and understanding of themselves and others throughout their lives. Art also reaches different learning styles of our students. The arts can connect to diverse communities and they bridge differences and build confidence and build community. The arts create a learning experience that helps to develop problem solving and critical thinking and decision making capacities – all these things are really critical to the academic subjects. Listen 
How has Arts for Academic Achievement impacted teaching and learning in Minneapolis Public Schools?
Minneapolis Public Schools have experienced increases in student achievement through arts education Our research agenda continues to collect and analyze data on both student achievement and improved teaching practices. Arts-integrated experiences provide students with new ways of understanding and expressing that knowledge through performances of understanding. It engages students who are also disengaged or who feel disengaged. Listen
What roles can the community and parents play in ensuring arts-integrated curriculum is available in public schools?
Parents make decisions regarding their child's school based on programs offered and many of these parents request for arts access. Parent and community active participation in school sites increase. Advocates for arts access to education, educate the whole child and grow strong communities and schools and students in the sense that student performances bring people from all over the community to celebrate the children's expressions and get to know each other as a result. Everyone in a community benefits when public schools succeed and schools can't succeed without art education. Listen
How can arts learning effect the school environment?
Builds a community of learners, arts develop an environment of imagination, innovation, creativity, problem-solving, impacts student achievement and teaching practices. Arts spotlight the successes of students. Arts promote a strong environment for student self identity and exploration and family involvement in student performances and exhibitions of learning are that much more enhanced. Listen
How does arts learning impact at-risk students or students with behavior problems?
When students are successful, affirmed and valued, their attendance improves. I believe arts provides a means of personal voice and self expression. I think this is very critical. Arts allows student assets to be discovered and develop. Arts build on what students know and engages them more actively in learning. And cultural backgrounds can become visible through the arts. We also have research that shows that ELL students have made significant gains when arts are involved in their learning. So it has a way of reaching all kids. Listen
As a major cultural center in the mid-West, what can Minneapolis offer to students?
I think we're very well situated to provide a great understanding of a global community, help students to participate in rich and diverse cultural and artistic opportunities both in school and throughout the community. We gain supports from the professional artistic community as a whole to the learning process. So we're connected, the very legacy, the very core of what this metro area is about. Listen
As a New Orleans native, how have the arts impacted your own life?
Music was very much a part of my household. I was surrounded both by classical and modern music. I played the cello for I don't know maybe 10 years or so and I was in the orchestra and I just know how important music was to my parents. I never spent as much time with arts but I did understand through my own personal experience and through observing them the importance of artistic expression as a means of really having a full sense of who you are as a human being. And the legacy of New Orleans is one of music and artistic expression, so it was kind of inevitable that my whole life would replicate the type of experience that I experienced just going out into the street and going to school and hanging out with my friends. Listen
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