We believe that public art of the New Deal Era can be a valuable resource for learners in a range of elementary, secondary, and even post-secondary settings. We also believe that students gain a more thorough understanding of a concept when they see the connections between history and the arts. And instead of the dreaded "Add-On", where teachers are asked to cram one more topic into an already crowded curriculum, New Deal art can be enriching while actually helping teachers to meet a number of critical issues.

Teachers can use New Deal Art to:

• Address Learning Standards across the curriculum, particularly Social Studies, The Arts, English/Language Arts, and in Technology.
• Develop skill areas - in critical thinking, research and historical documents, writing, and presentation.
• Deliver content. Most murals represent some important local, regional, or national social studies theme - a theme that likely needs to be learned.
• Plan constructivist learning experiences in which students use resources to create new content and draw their own conclusions from historical evidence.

An example of a comprehensive student investigation of a New Deal mural is one done in 1998-99 by an 11th grade U.S. History class at Rome Free Academy, in Rome, New York. This class was introduced to The Underground Railroad, a James Michael Newell fresco, created in 1940 for the new U.S. Post Office in nearby Dolgeville, New York. Students used the mural and its rich anti-slavery theme to launch a multi-faceted study of two critical periods in our history - Abolitionism and the New Deal.

To review the class project, Click on the Dolgeville Post Office below. Beware! This is student work, unpolished but genuine.	To see the Digital Story, a multi-media interpretation of The Underground Railroad, click on the mural below.