art classroom NBC videoA school constructed in 2003 for children in Roxbury, Mass., was already mired in violence and failure when principal Andrew Bott showed up in 2010.

He shocked a lot of people when he got rid of the security guards and reinvested that money into the arts.

Soon everything at the K-8 school started to change.

Now, three years later, the Boston area school is almost unrecognizable; essays of achievement grace the walls and students from kindergarten to eighth grade fill the revamped studios with dance, music and art.

Besides the colorful posters decorating the hallways, student achievement is rising, test scores are up, and discipline rates are back down.

(WATCH both videos below, or READ the story from NBC)

4 COMMENTS

  1. In California, cutbacks are deleting music from all the local schools except a few private ones. Sports, necessary for healthy students, have been mostly kept, but band, orchestra, chorus, and then all the fine arts classes are disappearing like the bees. How wonderful to see someone in Roxbury understanding children’s need for creativity.

  2. I agree, Sienna — SOOO wonderful to see someone realizing that children need to be creative. Education should be defined as lighting a torch under someone, rather than filling minds with facts.

  3. I enjoyed the article on GNN about the billionaires giving half their fortunes to Charities of their choice. One of the donors is George Lucas and his George Lucas Educational Foundation. What would the world accomplish with Principals like Andrew Bott and Billionaires like Lucas combining minds and efforts!? Money and compassion all rocketing to a bullseye of achievement, dare I say?

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