Vivir Mi Vida with 4th Grade

Lots of posting today... But this is mostly so that I remember what I'm thinking about.  This video is the culmination of a project that I did with the 4th grade class.  We spent the early part of the project listening through Marc Anthony's description of himself on his official music video.  The students then wrote a description of themselves based on similar phrasing, but personalized to themselves.  We learned the first verse and the chorus of the song, and my hope (too idealistic?) is that the language from the song will become part of the fabric of their Spanish brains.  Finally, we learned Salsa as we listened to the song.  This became an opportunity to incorporate some cultural elements into the project, and it also gave my energetic 4th graders a chance to get out of their seats which was a win for everyone.

Take aways?  

I want to keep doing stuff like this, but stuff like this takes a LONG time.  Am I ok with that?  How can I make a project like this beneficial on multiple levels so that it's worth the time and energy?  

Overall, it's fairly easy to justify this type of project in an elementary classroom where I am the visiting teacher once each week.  I am not grading these students.  I only see them 25 minutes per week.  I don't have as much responsibility for hard academic work.  I am allowed to be the 'fun' teacher in this context.  How do I transfer this to my middle and high school classrooms?  I believe it's worth the work to figure that out.