Christian-based private school Trinity Classical Academy offers music smoothly woven into other classes that not only teaches music, but overall Arts appreciation as well.

The hand bell is a 300-year-old instrument that made its way from England to America only a little over one hundred years ago, and in that time has developed an almost cult-like following. Jennifer Brown, Director of Hand Bells and Chimes at Trinity Classical Academy knows the hand bell to be much more; a unique tool used to teach music theory. Trinity Classical Academy has one of the only hand bell and chime choirs in the Santa Clarita Valley.

“Trinity had about two octaves, that’s about 18 bells,” explained Brown. “And when we were developing the electives for the school students at Trinity, we thought it would be really neat to utilize this really unique instrument.”

Using this tool to draw in and grow student interest, Trinity now has five octaves of bells used to perform within both the community and the school, where Johnson teaches students music theory and musicianship.

Trinity Classical Academy involves students in the fine arts at all levels, from those in Kindergarten to those in their senior year of high school. Appreciation of music and the fine arts at classical Christian-based Trinity has been a large recruiting card for the school in their efforts to round out individual growth, even more so now that similar programs have been gutted or eliminated at so many other schools elsewhere.

Trinity Classical Academy Music Program

The music is not just a standalone program, but is carefully woven into other classes to increase the appreciation for the art form by tying it into the learning timeline.  If the students are learning about the renaissance period in history class Johnson explains, they will study music of the same era in music class to better understand the motivation behind the creation of various pieces, as well as the renaissance painters in their art class.

“From Kindergarten to senior level, Arts is part of the curriculum at Trinity,” said Johnson proudly. Music is also used as the tool to assist those students with physical or emotional challenges with social and cognitive skills and expressive language.

The Imago Dei School, a part of Trinity Classical Academy, uses music as a critical part of their special needs instruction to help those that need a different way of learning to process information.  A specific curriculum has been developed for students at Imago Dei School including music therapy with it s own set of goals and objectives, said Johnson, because music takes a different pathway through the brain.

The various school grades recently presented their showmanship at their traditional Christmas Concert on December 17. All of the performing arts groups, including the orchestra, multiple choirs, a strings ensemble, the chimes and hand bell groups filled the hall with mellifluous sound.

This first half of the program was followed by a student-produced play called ‘Back To The Manger’ with 300 students singing praises to celebrate the birth of Jesus, while the story was acted out by other students.

Trinity Classical Academy is located at 28310 Kelly Johnson Parkway in Valencia.