The Higher Order Thinking (HOT) Schools approach is a whole school education reform approach that helps schools and their teachers change their culture over a six-year process to strengthen arts, arts integration, and democracy.

Mission: To inspire life-long learning in, about and through the arts in a democratic community celebrating each child’s unique voice.

Education reform and professional development design are based on three core components:
Strong arts: arts as rigorous academic subjects worthy of sequential, comprehensive study, with educational outcomes all their own.
Arts integration: reinforces learning in all disciplines and offers an arts rich learning environments in order to encourage students to make authentic connections across disciplines.
Democratic practice: a school culture purposefully encouraging choice, participation, connection and contribution of each member of the school community.

The HOT Approach appears in a school’s commitment to hands-on, minds-on, child-centered arts integrated experiences. In an arts infused environment, HOT Schools finds the processes of creating performance and response leads to increased achievement, increased attendance by students, higher self-esteem, decreased discipline problems, greater parent participation and a growing sense of community.

One Master Teacher from ArtsGenesis describes the approach, noting “The foundational components of Strong Arts, Arts Integration and Democratic Practice provide each school an opportunity to participate at their own level of readiness. The HOT Schools Approach is not a template. It is a framework within which each participating school can...find its strength and build a bridge to its weaknesses”.