At the James Weldon Johnson Leadership Academy in East Harlem, New York, administrators, teachers, students, families, and community-based artists worked together to create a visually explosive environment that reflected enriched learning experiences based on their multidisciplinary study of New York's history. The Mano a Mano ("Hand to…

It is important to find the means by which struggling writers can find success in the English Language Arts. For students struggling with reading and writing, the visual arts may be a way of accessing and expressing their ideas and ultimately opening up a world of creative possibilities. This article explores drawing and painting as a pre-writing…