Thelma Yellin High School of the Arts

The Thelma Yellin High School of the Arts was founded in 1959, and is named for the renowned Israeli cellist, Thelma Bentwich Yellin, who immigrated to Israel in the l920s from her native England. It was her dream to establish a high school that would nurture the very special needs of artistically gifted students during their high school years. After her death, Professor Eden Partosh and a number of prominent Israeli musicians and teachers, established the school in her memory.

Thelma Yellin is a national high school; its students come from all over the country to learn in an open,
supportive atmosphere whose professional staff is commited to the ideal of helping artistically gifted young people develop skills in their chosen field of specialization, while at the same time furthering their academic education. Our program offers courses in six majors: classical music, jazz, dance (classical ballet and modern dance), drama, visual arts and film. In these, the students are offered a wide variety of practical and theoretical courses at the highest standards. Our academic program is equally rich and challenging and all of our students matriculate at the end of the 12th grade and are qualified for entrance into all universities, both here and abroad.

At Thelma Yellin, we believe that students must be given the opportunity to put into practice things which they have learned in class. To that end, we have created Winter and Spring arts festivals, enabling the students to perform or exhibit their artistic achievements. We have an 80-member symphony orchestra, a?? big band, chamber ensembles, jazz ensembles, dance performances from the classical repertoire and original works choreographed by the students, theatre productions (such as the Broadway musicals Company, Grease,??Cabaret, The Pajama Games,??The Boys from Syracuse and others), art exhibitions, and a film festival. Both our symphony orchestra and big band travel abroad every other year to perform for international audiences. This year the big band was invited to perform at the prestigious annual convention of The International Association for Jazz Educators, which took place in New York City, and performed to wide acclaim. The symphony orchestra will tour France and Belgium, performing, among other places, at the UNESCO Auditorium in Paris. Many of our students go on to successful professional careers in their fields. To name just a few: the cellist Zvi Pressler, the clarinetist Sharon Kam, the saxophonist Eli D???Jibry, the pianist Alon Goldstein, the conductor Danny Ettinger, the comedian Shlomo Bar Abba, the actor Yehuda Levy, and the budding Hollywood starlet, Mili Avital.

Our students represent an interesting cross section of Israeli life; we have students from kibbutzim, moshavim, development towns, large cities, etc. In addition, many immigrants (both students and teachers), have been successfully integrated into our program. . In the past, as much as 15% of our student body came from such families and we continue to encourage talented young immigrants to attend our school. In this way, Thelma Yellin is truly a melting pot of Israeli society.

We have additional plans to expand our academic and artistic programs to include specially gifted students from other sectors of Israeli society: ultra-orthodox, Arabs and Druze. Such a program would, naturally, require special funding and has become part of our school???s ambitious efforts in that regard.

At Thelma Yellin we make a concerted effort to raise funds to meet the growing demands of our challenging program and its special students. It is common knowledge that studies in the arts are costly, to say the least. Nevertheless, we encourage gifted students from economically deprived backgrounds to attend our school even though their parents are hard pressed to find the necessary funds for their children's studies. Likewise, we accept gifted students with physical disabilities. For example, currently we have a very gifted blind student who lives some distance from the school. Since he is unable to use public transportation by himself he needs financial assistance for a car service. Small donations are used to fund individual scholarships for students such as those mentioned above; larger donations are needed for the necessary purchase and replacement of musical instruments, refurbishing of acoustic facilities, computers, laboratories for the sciences, workshops for sculpting, painting, photography, and so on. We continue to dream of raising sufficient funds to build a multi-purpose auditorium on the school grounds that would meet the performance and exhibition needs of all our arts departments. Student body assemblies, observing national holidays and memorial days, student council activities and parties, etc., are also an integral part of any high school program. These would also take place there. Today, with the absence of such a facility, they take place in the scourtyard, with all its limitations, especially during the many months of intense heat that make outside activities difficult, at best. Until such time as an appropriate auditorium is built, we will continue our current practice of holding all performances and exhibitions in various venues in the greater Tel Aviv area.

The Thelma Yellin High School of the Arts is located in Givatayim, at the crossroads of three cities: Tel Aviv, Ramat Gan and Givatayim. The school moved to its present location over 20 years ago, to a small building that was originally designed to accommodate an elementary school. It was not then, nor is it now adequately equipped to meet all of the needs of a high school specializing in academic, as well as artistic studies. Over the years, numerous additions have been made to the original building: four "temporary" caravans were constructed in the school yard to accommodate four 10th grade core classes; an additional, multi-purpose facility ("the red building") was constructed next to the original building, to house a dance studio and showers, a computer lab and a double classroom which is used for classes in theatre arts as well as small theatrical productions; a partial third storey was built on approximately one third of the original building, housing the school's library, a small auditorium with a seating capacity of 150 for in-school productions, and a single core classroom.

The result is a high school whose activities take place in three separate facilities, none of which adequately meets the school's needs.

We have only two acoustic rooms where individual students and small ensembles can practice. These don't begin to meet the needs of the many working ensembles whose playing interferes with the studies going on simultaneously in other classrooms. We have no gymnasium, and all sports activities, which take place in the school yard, likewise create a disturbance to the surrounding classrooms.

??Over the years benefactors have given generously to various projects in school: a fully equipped sound studio for recording musical arrangements and performances by music students and the 150 seat theatre workshop mentioned above are two of the most prominent.

Another priority is the completion of the third storey on the remaining two thirds of the school's original building, and replacing the four "temporary" caravans with permanent classrooms.

In addition, since the Ministry of Education has recently cut its budget severely, we have had to use some funds for teachers' salaries rather than development, making it even more imperative for us to raise funds for development.

Thelma Yellin is the only national high school in Israel which combines an ambitious artistic program with an equally challenging academic one. Many of Israel???s finest artists, in all fields, are our graduates. For over 40 years we have continuously maintained the highest standards in all areas of endeavor, despite sharp budget cuts from the Ministry of Education in recent years. We are dedicated to the continuation of everything this unique school stands for, and we need support to insure that our important work goes on without impediment.