This book follows the course of a year-long experiment in which the students were tasked with recreating a McDonald's Happy Meal by making all the components - from food to packaging - by hand from local ingredients. It was meant to test a hypothesis that a very well-designed project in the arts can teach high school students academic skills and habits of mind while increasing motivation, emotional intelligence, creativity and holistic thinking skills. This book is an antidote to other books that purport to show teachers an exact formula to follow to get amazing results in the classroom. It...

This book is an antidote to other books that purport to show teachers an exact formula to follow to get amazing results in the classroom. It will help to create a classroom that is more like play, with much more freedom and less scripting in order to engage students at a deeper level, and still get excellent results by using arts-based research.