MoAD in the Classroom (MIC) is an arts-based, visual literacy and cultural studies program for third grade classrooms located in the San Francisco Bay Area. A MoAD Educator makes two trips to the classroom and the students make two visits to the museum. While in the classroom, MoAD Educators teach students about museum themes, current exhibitions, and visual arts vocabulary. During the museum visits, students view current art exhibitions, learn how to view and talk about art, and participate in hands-on art activities.
Following the initial classroom and museum visits, each class participates in four supplementary classroom visits from teaching artists, during which students complete project-based artwork, serving as a summative evaluation of what students learned throughout the program. As a culminating event, students display and present their work to peers, family members, and other stakeholders beyond the classroom.
MoAD partnered with Public Profit in the 2016-17 program year to evaluate MIC.
With a focus on positive youth development and youth experience, we collaborated to develop a Theory of Change for the program (Figure 1); that youth who participate in high quality arts programs experience benefits, including expanded arts vocabulary and understanding of art concepts, increased confidence in creating, talking about, and connecting with art.