Fine Arts

Performing Arts

Performing Arts students pursue passions, take creative risks, develop and enhance confidence, practice creative problem solving, engage in supportive community, and cultivate artistic skills.


Band

Band is offered to students in grades 5-12, with courses including 5th Grade Band, 6th Grade Band, Middle School Band (Grades 7-8), and Wind Ensemble (Grades 9-12). The focus of the program is on building performance skills and fostering a life-long love of music. Students begin with basic technique of woodwind, brass, and percussion instruments and progress through study and performance of standard literature in the wind band repertoire. Performance opportunities include concerts, festivals, solos, ensembles, pep band, drumline, and participation in TPSMEA/TMEA honor ensembles.

Choir

Choir students begin with sight-reading skills, vocal development, and techniques before progressing to harmonies, tonality, breath control, key signatures, and complex rhythms with meter changes. Opportunities include performance concerts, auditions for solo work, and honor groups.

Dance

Dance instruction begins in the 6th grade and continues through the Upper School. The program introduces various styles of dance including lyrical, contemporary, jazz, hip hop, ballet, and tap. The program also focuses on building student confidence, ensemble techniques, and a supportive community of dancers at Cooper. The classes culminate each May with a combined 6-12th grade performance of Life!

Drama

Drama students begin with a focus on proper warm up techniques, voice and movement instruction, audition monologues, character analysis, and foundational principals of theater acting before progressing to relaxation techniques, script analysis, and scene study with multiple performance opportunities available each year.

General Music

Lower School students use the development of healthy singing practices and proper instrument techniques to lay the foundation for music literacy, music appreciation, active music-making, and performance. Students are introduced to a wide variety of instruments and participate in performance opportunities.

Technical Theater

Technical Theater focuses on strengthening leadership, reinforcing terminology, and understanding the processes for staffing and running a production and allows students to use a wide range of media to apply design, drafting, and time management skills in the construction of production sets.




From Curiosity to Wisdom
The John Cooper School is an independent, non-sectarian, co-educational, college preparatory day school. Our mission is to provide a challenging education in a caring environment to a diverse group of select students, enabling them to become critical and creative thinkers, effective communicators, responsible citizens and leaders, and lifelong learners.

The John Cooper School seeks to attract qualified individuals of diverse backgrounds to its faculty, staff, and student body. The School does not discriminate against any individual in admissions, educational programs, personnel policies, general practices, or employment, on the basis of race, color, religion, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, national or ethnic origin, physical disability, or age.