A Reason to Read: Linking Literacy and the Arts

A Reason to Read is the culminating work of the ArtsLiteracy Project, an ambitious and wide-ranging collaborative that aims to promote literacy through rich and sustained instruction in the arts.

At the heart of the book is the “Performance Cycle,” a flexible framework for curriculum and lesson planning that can be adapted to all content areas and age groups. Each of the book’s main chapters delineates and explores a particular component of the cycle.

A practical, readable, and inspiring book, A Reason to Read will be of immeasurable help to school teachers, education leaders, and all who have a stake in promoting literacy and the arts in today’s schools.

Eileen Landay was the Clinical Professor of English Education at Brown University, director of Brown’s MAT Program in English Education, and faculty director of Brown Summer High School from 1993 to 2006. She is the cofounder and codirector of the ArtsLiteracy Project, which in 2005 received the President’s Commission on the Arts and Humanities “Coming Up Taller” Award. She holds an appointment as adjunct senior lecturer at Brown, where she continues to teach. She also teaches and consults regionally and nationally on adolescent literacy development, arts integration, and English education.

Before coming to Brown, Landay was a teacher of secondary and elementary English, the English Language Arts consultant for the Maine Department of Education, chief reader for the Maine Educational Assessment, and a poet in the state’s schools, funded through the Maine Arts Commission. She edited Maine Speaks: An Anthology of Maine Literature (Maine Writers & Pubs Alliance, 1996) and is the author of children’s fiction, several books on teaching poetry, and numerous articles and book chapters, including the articles “Across the Doorsill: Extending Learning with Students in Mind and Body,” in Voices in Urban Education (2007) and “Narrative Interviews: An Approach to Studying Teaching and Learning in English Classrooms,” in High School Journal (February/March 2001). She holds an MA from the Bread Loaf School of English at Middlebury College and an EdD from Harvard Graduate School of Education.

Kurt Wootton is the cofounder and codirector of the ArtsLiteracy Project in the Education Department at Brown University. His work in urban schools with diverse populations has led him to work in different countries in Latin America, particularly Brazil and Mexico. He is also the codirector of Habla: The Center for Language and Culture in Mérida, Mexico, a combination language school, education center, and community-based arts organization. With a specialty in creative literacy pedagogies, teacher professional development, and organizational change, Wootton works with teachers and administrators to help design schools and organizations that are creative, meaningful, and welcoming places.  

Previously he worked as an urban school reform consultant for the Providence School District and has led literacy initiatives for the Boston Public Schools, the St. Paul Public Schools, the Central Falls School District, and Plan Estratégico de Mérida, Mexico. Wootton has been called on to offer keynote speeches and workshops in a variety of settings, including Harvard University, Middlebury College, SmART Schools, Chicago Arts Partnerships in Education, Florida Atlantic University, the University of Maryland, Senac University in Sao Paulo, the Arts Education Partnership, as well as at numerous conferences.

He writes about education on his own blog, The Education Labyrinth, as well as for the Huffington Post. His publications include “Thinking Differently: The Arts and School Reform,” College Board (2010); “A Constant Search: Arts-Integration in Cross-Cultural Environments,” Teaching Artist Journal (July 2008); and, with Eileen Landay, Mary Beth Meehan, A. Leonard Newman, and Donald W. King, “Postcards from America: Linking Classrooms and Community in an ESL class,” English Journal (2005). He divides his time between Mexico and the United States.