Amazing Mom: Cyndie Bellen-Berthézène

Amazing Mom: Cyndie Bellen-Berthézène, who started the New York City arts program, HiArt, and then brought it to under-served public schools.

Cyndie's Family: Husband: Matthew Greenbaum, married 22 years; Kid: Zoë, 15

Cyndie Lives in: Princeton, New Jersey

Why Cyndie Is Amazing: When Zoë was almost 3, Cyndie Bellen-Berthézène thought that her daughter was fairly precocious. "Zoë had very early language. She was able to tell me a lot of things," she says. But she also thought that there must be millions of other smart kids out there, too.

Around that time, the family moved from Philadelphia to New York, and Cyndie, a trained opera singer and dancer, began looking for a job. "Finally I thought, 'What if I teach other people's kids the things I taught Zoe?'" With that idea, HiArt was born, and over its 13 years, it has become a New York institution, attracting kids and families with courses that combine opera, modern art, movement, sculpture, and even manga, Japanese comic-book art.

As the children of the rich and famous flocked to HiArt, Cyndie became convinced that she needed to bring her brand of arts education to less privileged kids. Enter the Time In Children's Arts Initiative, which brings Cyndie's innovative and notably flamboyant teaching style to under-served city schools. She chose the name, she says, "because children who are 'bad' in school shouldn't get a time out. It shouldn't be about what they can't do. They need a time in. They need to be in the real world, and have a chance to be who they are and be recognized for it. They need to have people say, 'You can be great at this.'"

As she raised money to get Time In off the ground, potential donors asked Cyndie if she could really take young kids and get them excited about a program that involved such lofty pursuits as sophisticated opera. "I was cocky, but I knew they could do it," she says. She wholeheartedly believes that there's no reason kids shouldn't appreciate classical music and opera, once they're exposed to it.

The idea that kids be allowed to experience art on their own terms is central to Cyndie's mission. "They see what's beautiful," she says, "and they understand it very well when they are being accorded respect, and when people are taking them seriously."

After lengthy negotiations with the public schools involved -- it helped that Cyndie did all the fund-raising for the program herself -- she reached a "pretty radical" deal, she says, to take all of the kids involved in Time In out of school two hours a week throughout the school year.

Time In begins working with kids -- an entire grade of kids -- in kindergarten or pre-K, and continues through the end of elementary school in fifth grade. "We will not kick out 'special' children. We take all children -- the entire class, the classroom teacher, and any parents who want to come."

Now in its fourth season, Cyndie is working with young students in Harlem and the Bronx. "Time In is the most radical thing out there right now," she says. "Why is it fantastic? Because my kids understand what's out there. They know 10 operas and ballets -- they own those operas -- and they're on a first-name basis with Andy Warhol."

Cyndie's Daughter Zoë Says: "My mother is the most inspirational person in my life for the simple reason that she tells me not to be like her. And even though she tells me not to be like her, I still want to share the things I love with her because I know she'll always want to learn about them."

Recognition: A Greene Grant for innovation in education from the Maxine Greene Foundation for Social Imagination, the Arts & Education.

Cyndie's Guilty Pleasure: A manga series called From Eroica With Love, which started in the mid-'70s and details the adventures of characters including a NATO officer and an art thief. "My daughter recently introduced me to it," Cyndie says. "Now I'm a fanatic."

Cyndie's Best Advice: "Very often we want our children to mirror us and to be a complete reflection of the values that we espouse. But one of the greatest things we can do as parents is listen to our children and be excited by the separation that they choose. Learning to value your children's independent ideas, their own choices of the things they love and are passionate about, that, to me as a mother, is the most empowering, amazing thing. My daughter does her own thing, and I think that's fantastic. Believing that your child can separate from you is a great gift."

Related: Amazing Mom: Joy Rose

Want to see who else made the list? Click here for the rest of AOL's 2010 Amazing Moms!