Arts
At Gesu School, music and visual arts are woven into the curriculum for grades Pre-K - 8. The arts play a critical role in developing students’ creativity, critical thinking, and motor skills. All Gesu students take music and art classes weekly for 45 minutes each.
Gesu Music Program
The program aims to increase our students’ knowledge and appreciation for music and performing arts, using multiple learning methods, including hands-on experience with instruments. Grades Pre-K – 6 learn music theory and apply it through song, movement, performance, and playing instruments, such as the recorder and keyboard. In grades 7-8, emphasis is on music literature and introductions to music styles.
Gesu School Gospel Choir
The Gesu Gospel Choir is open to students in grades 5-8. Students audition and attend weekly rehearsals. The choir performs regularly for assemblies, church services at Gesu, the Gesu gala, and local community events.
In 2023, the choir was selected as a semi-finalist in the WHYY Lifting Voices in Praise Gospel competition and participated in filming at WHYY television studios. The choir was one of only eighteen semi-finalists across the WHYY viewing area of Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Delaware. The WHYY Lifting Voices in Praise contest was created in part to highlight the Henry Louis Gates, Jr. documentary titled Gospel, which explores African American religions’ two transcendent gifts to national and world culture: Gospel music and the Black preaching tradition.
Gesu Visual Arts Program
Gesu’s art studio stretches students’ imagination and creativity beyond arts and crafts. The curriculum teaches fine arts and balances traditional artwork and mediums with digital art. Our approach is: teaching fundamental concepts such as color theory and composition, training students to see relationships and proportion, and fine-tuning motor skills to create art.
Gesu connects art to students’ cultural heritage and to cultural awareness each month. Art history and movements are woven into the curriculum. We believe that art enables students to apply skills in critical thinking, problem solving, goal setting, and mindfulness.
Students explore these mediums: Water color, acrylic, and tempera paints; clay, digital art and animation, mosaics, wire sculpture, origami, charcoal and pencil for drawing.
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