Education & Classes in Cahokia

Just Dancing's team of experienced instructors, which includes international competitors and dancers who train with former US champions, teaches budding dancers of all ages several styles, including swing, foxtrot, and salsa. Instructors offer private and group lessons for individuals and couples, dividing most group classes into beginner, intermediate, and advanced sessions so students can learn alongside those of similar skill levels. Staffers also lead nontraditional group classes such as classical Indian dance and yoga in addition to arranging special numbers for math-themed wedding ceremonies.

Fire. Hammers. A pottery wheel. Some of humanity’s most elemental and primitive tools, yet into the 21st century they remain. And Craft Alliance Program Director Susan Donahue Yates attests that they’re some of the coolest. With each season’s catalog of classes, some of the most popular, according to Yates, let students play with fire, hammer metal into jewelry, or shape a lump of clay into something as fundamentally beautiful as a baby seal mimicking the Mona Lisa’s wry smirk.

At Craft Alliance, the focus is art in all its forms. Whether the tool is the raw flame fusing cut copper or a Mac loaded with Photoshop image-editing software, the intention to inspire and to create remains the same. Its two locations schedule seasonal terms with four- to six-week classes, as well as intensive workshops and children’s classes. Guiding each student along his or her adventure, skilled faculty instruct from experience. Most are working artists who exhibit their work and who have reaped their experience from the trenches of the art world.

Craft Alliance is not just empowering people with knowledge; they are also helping people make mugs, bowls, wooden spinning tops, rings, rugs, and digital photo albums. Many of these things are practical and serve a functional purpose. But many do not—they’re just beautiful things, like vestigial tails. A good number of these pieces are created by hand and are meant to remind us, as Yates remarked, that everyone can do something different from their everyday, workaday lives by adding beauty to a world that truly needs it.

The student and faculty artists backbone the Craft Alliance community, which in 2014 celebrates its 50th anniversary. The Grand Center location represents a regeneration of an arts district already pillared by the Fabulous Fox Theatre, Powell Symphony Hall, and St. Louis University.

The staff members at Sylvan Learning's numerous study facilities understand that each child learns differently. Therefore, they don’t try to implement a uniform tutoring system; instead, they design custom lesson programs based on the results of standardized testing, diagnostic tools, and one-on-one interviews.

Tutors work with students from kindergarten through grade 12, illuminating topics ranging from basic reading and writing to remembering complex algebraic formulas without having them tattooed on your chest. Many of Sylvan’s instructors work in local schools, so they are intimately familiar with common curricula and understand how to gear lessons toward optimal results. After-school and summer classes can ready high-schoolers for the rigors of the ACT or the SAT, or they can help students to wow college-admissions officers with their superior essay-writing skills.

Discover World Cuisine promotes local agriculture through a series of community programs that highlight locally sourced ingredients as well as the restaurants and cafeteria food fights that use them. The consortium of chefs, sommeliers, and foodies hosts cooking classes and dinners throughout the summer months that spotlight dishes from Europe, South America, and the Caribbean. Organic food and wine festivals also feature international nibbles as well as live music and giveaways.

Proceeds from the events support Discover World Cuisine’s community outreach program, which partners with area schools to introduce kids to new foods and help them develop healthy eating habits. Classroom sessions balance hands-on instruction with activity sheets to teach students to select and prepare low-cost, nutritious meals.

At Dave Simon's Rock School, dedicated instructors help students develop musical abilities through programs centered on collaboration and live performance. In addition to private lessons, the school provides a venue for kids to cultivate skills and build confidence using the same cooperative methods that professional bands use when persuading the tour-bus driver to stop for tacos. Working together according to their experience level and skill, bands apply musical theory to perfect their sound among their ensemble, eventually presenting live shows and recording a CD in the facility's state-of-the-art studio.

Heyde Sewing Machine Company needs every inch of its 5,500 feet of retail space: shelves groan under the weight of more than 5,000 bolds of cloth, and in addition to sewing notions and quilting supplies, the store stocks machines from brands such as Brother and Pfaff. This wealth of fabric and needlework necessities sets the stage for classes on subjects ranging from basic sewing-machine operation to advanced undertakings such as quilting or navigating embroidery-lettering software. In addition to friendly instructors, the staff includes skilled technicians ready to repair sewing machines of any make or model and sharpen shears dulled by snipping obnoxious neighbors’ power lines. The store’s encouraging embroidery and quilting clubs, as well as its library of patterns, make for a creatively fertile atmosphere that brings crafters back again and again.