Watch: Professor John Alston's Work With Chester
Youth Featured in the Philadelphia Inquirer

by Stacey Kutish
10/14/2009

"Money shouldn't be the determining factor for something as basic as education" says Associate Professor of Music John Alston in the Philadelphia Inquirer. Alston has devoted himself to ensuring that this is the case for children in the city of Chester, Pa. He is the founder of the Chester Children's Chorus and the Chester Upland School of the Arts. Both projects provide outlets for young people to develop a joy for learning through music and performance.

The Philadelphia Inquirer highlights the great success of the Chester Upland School of the Arts, now in its second year of operation, with both an article and a video feature. The school's students made significant academic progress in the inaugural year, ending the school year with the second highest reading and math test scores in the district. Alston shares his hopes for the students in the article, "This is a real opportunity to compete with children in the most affluent school districts in the United States, if they can learn to love Palestrina, they can learn to love Shakespeare. If they can learn to love Rossini, they can learn to love Tolstoy and Austen." more

The school was also recently profiled in the Swarthmore College Bulletin.