Visual Arts Center of New Jersey

The Visual Arts Center of New Jersey will work with the Elizabeth Public Schools to engage and empower immigrant students and build English-language skills by implementing curriculum and lesson plans in connection with its contemporary art exhibitions. The project team will develop the curriculum for 8th grade bilingual classes and for 9th grade point-of-entry students. The new curriculum will align with existing Spanish, English Language Arts, and Social Studies curricula. The project will strengthen the relationship between the museum and the public school system while providing a visual, nonlinguistic entry point to language learning for an expanding community of English Language Learners from disparate languages and cultures. An external project evaluator will develop an assessment plan to measure whether participants incorporated knowledge, gained skills, and changed attitudes in their classrooms and at the museum.