Meet Letha Ann Pilgrim-Castro of Collin County Homeschool Fine Arts

Today we’d like to introduce you to Letha Ann Pilgrim-Castro.

Letha, let’s start with your story. We’d love to hear how you got started and how the journey has been so far.
I have been homeschooling for 8 years. My profession is Music Education. While my children were little, I noticed that there wasn’t an avenue for homeschool students to explore Fine Arts with professional instruction that would allow them to pursue the Arts as a career. This was of a great concern to me, but my children were too little for me to invest into anything at that time. I started my private lessons studio and again was faced with the amateur level of musical training many of the students had who came to me from other teachers. This frustrated me greatly.

Slowly an idea was developing to start a homeschool fine arts program with academically qualified instructors that would be able to propel homeschool students into the Fine Arts professions of their choosing. I started with band because that is my specialty. The following year we added orchestra. We are aggressively pursuing activating a Visual Arts program. Ultimately, we plan to have a homeschool performing arts center complete with an auditorium for performances, rehearsal halls and classrooms. We plan to offer every aspect of fine arts that we can…band, orchestra, choir, visual arts, theater arts, dance. We will expand as far as we can as long as we have instructors with adequate academic and professional training in order to train and mentor our students with the highest quality of instruction possible.

We’re always bombarded by how great it is to pursue your passion, etc – but we’ve spoken with enough people to know that it’s not always easy. Overall, would you say things have been easy for you?
Nothing is ever smooth! But any project worth tackling is worth working and fighting for! Although because this is something I am passionate about and love so dearly, the struggles haven’t seemed that hard.

Finding classroom space, developing high standards and fighting to maintain them, acquiring the equipment we need, managing the exponential growth! Understanding and navigating the business side of things…nonprofit, budget development. For me personally, time management!!

I don’t find that the struggles I have bumped into insurmountable at all! I solve them and move on!!

So let’s switch gears a bit and go into the Collin County Homeschool Fine Arts story. Tell us more about the business.
CCHFA is a Fine Arts program primarily for homeschooled students. We specialize in teaching the students with the highest of standards possible, encouraging them to be excellent, give them quality instruction that enables them to be successful and be able to compete confidently with anyone in the fine arts arena.

I am most proud of the progress our students have made. We do not have the luxury of meeting every day for rehearsals/classes. We meet once a week and much of the program depends on the student’s commitment to complete the daily assignments on their own each week. I am most proud of our students and their amazing success!!

Our program is not for recreational classes. Our standards and expectations will produce students who could pursue their specialty professionally. This is what sets us apart. There isn’t another program in the area that offers the level of expertise and training that we do…at least not at this time! I hope we provoke others to have the same standard and expectations especially in the area of ensembles.

Pricing:

• Fall Semester $280 Spring Semester $350

Contact Info:

• Address: 306 North Church Street, McKinney, TX
• Website: http://www.cchfinearts.com
• Phone: 940-390-0807
• Email: [email protected]

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