“TRANSFORMATIONAL!”
Professional Development
for K-16 and Community
Based Educators
Community Works Journal—Online Magazine for Educators
REGISTER TODAY, SPECIAL RATES Through June 15th  Curriculum Planning, Teaching Tools, and Inspiring Collaboration 2014 SUMMER INSTITUTES for K-16 EDUCATORS Place, Service-Learning, and Sustainable Communities Los Angeles and Vermont
City Hearts: Reaching Inner City Youth through the Arts 2014 SUMMER INSTITUTES for K-16 EDUCATORS Place, Service-Learning, and Sustainable Communities
 
“City Hearts: Kids Say Yes to the Arts” is an Arts enrichment program in the Los Angeles County area that was founded by Sherry and Bob Jason in 1984 and began offering classes in 1985. City Hearts hires teachers from Los Angeles’ Arts community to teach dance, acting, circus arts, musical theatre, Shakespeare, singing, crafts, and photography free to the community’s most impoverished children. The list of arts and artists continues to grow, connecting thousands of underprivileged students with professionals to inspire learning and integrate disaffected youth back into the community through the Arts. The following is a recent interview with founder Sherry Jason.
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The Arts Should Be for Everyone
“I began teaching ballet at the age of eleven in my garage, charging 50 cents a class. Even then there was a family—the father was a schoolteacher, and the mother worked in Bob’s Big Boy as a car hop. They had three kids, and ballet lessons for their two girls would have cost their lunch money. Right then and there I decided that art should be provided to every child, regardless of their ability to pay. I waived their fee.”
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SUGGESTED RESOURCES  For further reading about the importance of the arts in brain development and interconnections between the arts and learning, see the following resources. –eds.