Kindergarten – 8th Grade
Students are encouraged to express their knowledge, ideas and creativity through all forms of visual art, including drawing, painting, photography and three dimensional arts. Elementary classroom teachers encourage skill building and several schools have a credentialed art teacher or teaching artist on staff who guides students through standards based projects on a weekly basis. Some after school programs include visual art classes.
Middle School
Each middle school offers standards-based visual art courses as electives during the school day. Students build on skills learned at the elementary grades when exploring portraiture, color, design, still life drawing, print-making and ceramics. Elementary and middle school art is always on exhibit at the schools. Every odd year the Berkeley Art Center hosts a district-wide visual art show grades K-8 where student work from each school is on display.
High School
Berkeley High School offers a very extensive selection of Arts courses including drawing and painting, several levels of black and white (darkroom) and digital photography, various levels of ceramics, print-making, sculpture and AP Studio Art. In addition to in-school gallery exhibits, BHS student work is shown each spring at the KALA Gallery in Berkeley. The Arts and Humanities Academy, one of the small schools at Berkeley High School, provides the opportunity for students to learn in core subject areas through various art forms while personally developing artistically.