Magnet Information

Performing Arts

Bethune Elementary's Performing and Visual Arts Program provides unlimited artistic experiences in an extended school day. Now you can turn your child's dream of performing into reality.

Creative children are inspired to imagine, create and communicate their ideas and feelings through music, theater, art,  dance and the written word.

Our goal for students is to enrich their lives through an understanding and enjoyment of the arts.

The arts are essential elements of education just like reading, writing, and arithmetic... Music, dance, painting, and theater are keys that unlock profound understanding and accomplishment. Children should be handed these keys at an early stage."     from First Lessons report on elementary education

prepared by William Bennett, former U. S. Secretary of Education

At Bethune Elementary we are proud to provide a magnet program with a performing and visual arts emphasis. Students from the primary grades (kindergarten through second grade) take part in an exposure program, rotating through dance, drama, band, keyboard, strings and the two-dimensional and three-dimensional visual arts. Through the exposure-type program, students begin to discover their areas of strength in the arts and, along with their parents and teachers, are able to make a choice for a major and minor area of focus in grade three.

At the intermediate level (grades three through five) students pursue intensive training at a more advanced level in the areas they have chosen. At fifth grade level, students are prepared for entrance into the middle school performing arts magnet if that is their middle school choice.

Thought that can merge wholly into feeling, feeling that can merge wholly into thought, these are the artist's highest joys.

THOMAS MANN

Bethune Elementary School of the Arts

Latosha R. Williams Principal

Theon A. Eames, Assistant Principal