Student playing a guitar

The Arts

Students performing on stage at SDJA

Cultivating student success through artistic expression

The Upper School Visual and Performing Arts Department provides a balanced, comprehensive, and sequential program of study in the arts that honors process over product. Students develop transferable skills that enhance their personal, academic, and professional endeavors, allowing them to make sense of the world, communicate their unique ideas across boundaries, and discover who they are as individuals. Our Lower School students are encouraged to express themselves through performance in ways that are comfortable and fun for them. They build confidence and collaborative skills as they work together to create.

Our Program

The Arts Classroom

In the Visual and Performing Arts classroom at San Diego Jewish Academy, we focus on developing creativity through engagement, trial and error, practice, and expression in the form of presentation and performance. Performance and exhibition are essential components of the curriculum. SDJA’s middle and upper school offers drama classes, including a rotation in theater production. Lower school students engage in art classes. The classroom extends beyond the space and time of the regular classes through school and community showcasing.

Performing Arts Auditorium

In addition to the classroom, our state-of-the-art Ana “Janche” Galicot Performing Arts Auditorium (PAA) is a 5,000 square foot facility that features 3 multi-purpose rooms, a theater space and auditorium, as well as state-of-the-art audio, visual, lighting and acoustical design. The PAA enables us to bring more experiences to life and to think even more creatively about how we imbue in our students a deep love of learning, social responsibility, and active Jewish living.