With ongoing professional development and with appropriate tools, teachers are able to internalize information-process skills. Once they understand these process skills, they are able to apply them to any media content and to transform their teaching, without the need for a "cookbook" approach, reliant only on textbooks. Instead, teachers can use fresh media content while teaching to state standards. With a deeper understanding of media literacy, teachers help their students to learn in a new way, preparing students with lifelong-learning skills of critical analysis and self-expression applicable in a global media culture. Project SMARTArt yielded steps forward both in teaching practice and in theory that have had important effects on the fields of media literacy and the arts. Project SMARTArt was one of the first federal media literacy and arts grants. When Project SMARTArt began in 2001, the partners were grateful that the type of funding received was through a federal "demonstration grant" because this project represented a beginning in which there were far more questions than answers on how to combine media literacy and the arts in an elementary school classroom. (Contains 1 Editor's note and 5 notes.)