Lusher Alternative Elementary School in New Orleans, Louisiana, teams with the Ogden Museum of Southern Art, an affiliate of the University of New Orleans, on a unit of study based on the work of local artist Will Henry Stevens. Lusher fourth-grade teacher Nancy Lilly and the museum’s curator of education, Ann Rowson Love, lead students on a rich exploration of their cultural heritage as well as of the colors, lines, forms, and other elements found in Stevens’ art.

As a culminating project, students exhibit original pictures and poems that explore their personal “sense of place” in a gallery show for parents. “Students were very proud, and I think they saw that their parents were impressed by the amount of knowledge that they had,” says Lilly.