One text that I found extremely engaging to my work and professional growth as an educator was Eileen Landay's, A Reason to Read. Having studied under Professor Landay during the Summer term of the Brown MAT program, I was intrigued by her research on the arts integrated into the core content classes. Her focus is on the performance cycle and the way by which theater can improve literacy, but after speaking with Professor Landay, about the other content classes as well as the other arts, I noted how valuable arts integration could be in other curricula, specifically social studies. This text and research served as the foundation for both my Education 1450 research, as well as my Teacher Research Project, and I often referred to A Reason to Read for ideas regarding my own classroom and to see what activities could be best implemented for my students to attain higher levels of literacy. What I gained from Landay's piece is not just how literacy can be affected by the arts, but specifically the stages that must be worked through within a classroom to ultimately reach the goals of what you want your final classroom to look like. By first building community within the classroom to transitioning into the beginning stages of content entry and connecting the content with students' own lives, Landay sets a framework for the structure of a classroom and the levels a teacher should work through. Having this text as a handbook moving forward will prove incredibly valuable and I am fortunate to have been introduced to this research so early on in my teaching career. 

To see highlights of Landay's work, please take a look at the Arts Literacy website, artslit.org.