In 2002, Oakland and Richmond introduced a state mandated literacy curriculum, called Open Court Reader. It is both very time consuming and rigidly structured. All the teachers across the district must be on the same page at the same time. VALA, funded by the West Contra Costa Ed Fund, conducted a series of workshops for Richmond teachers to do programs linked to Open Court themes. The teachers and artists used elements of these workshops when they returned to their classrooms.

Our main focus today is on preschoolers. The purpose of this project is to teach pre-literacy through the visual and performing arts. The programs we have conducted at six schools this past semester have successfully used the arts in multiple ways to teach letters and communication skills through reading stories, teaching songs, movement, visual arts, and video. Linda Jackson, the principal of the preschools in Richmond, has successfully prevented Open Court curriculum from intruding into most of the preschools in West Contra Costa. Therefore VALA artists will have the freedom to conduct their own programs, unfettered by a particular thematic emphasis or pre-selected exercises for learning to read and write. An example of a program developed is the one created by Tina Rotenbeg, Director of VALA. She has written a story, called Around the World for her preschool class at King School in Richmond. It is illustrated by her assistant/visual artist Katey Carter, and translated into Spanish by translator Evita Helena. It uses the already existing classroom theme of "sea creatures," chosen by the classroom teacher, to introduce preschool children to letters in English, Egyyptian hieroglyphs, and Hebrew.