Education & Classes in Desert Hot Springs

Give a guy a fish, and he'll eat for a day; teach a guy to make perfect sushi rolls, and he'll be the culinary king of the cul-de-sac. Today's Groupon can save you from embarrassing Thanksgivings, disastrous dinners with in-laws, and foolhardy tamale-making face-offs. With today's deal, $12 gets you $29 worth of cooking classes of your choice from The Cooking Store (many classes are $29, but if you want to take a more expensive course, you can pay the difference). Find out why your soufflé always falls or learn the basics of braising and roasting and the dark art of broasting. Check out The Cooking Store's calendar of upcoming classes.

Arthur Murray Dance Studio's panel of experienced instructors earned the establishment an Orange County Register People's Choice award for Best Dance School in 2009 for their prowess at schooling students in the ways of balance and coordinated rhythmic motion. Across six southern California studios, teams of highly trained teachers emphasize holistic dancing skills as opposed to specific steps, ensuring students leave lessons with a greater understanding of their chosen form. They offer more than 29 available dance styles, including the waltz, the rumba, polka, texas two-step, and the merengue. During private lessons, instructors have dancers pair off with a partner as they dole out individual tips and techniques, preparing students for the more communal group lessons. Burgeoning boogiers can also attend one of the themed practice parties to test out their growing repertoire of skills with fellow classmates. Each studio announces party themes and times on its online calendars in advance.

The sky above the Coachella Valley is often sunny and clear. The cloudless conditions make it easy to pick out a small aircraft as it materializes out of a mountain range on the horizon, then corkscrews and performs a grand loop-the-loop before heading home to the Jacqueline Cochran Regional Airport. The shiny blue Citabria plane is the resident aerobatic aircraft at JacksonAir Flight Training. The company's owner, Scott Mourhess, who dreamed of G-forces and airborne antics as a little boy, now oversees a fleet of no fewer than six aircraft used to train commercial and private pilots.

Scott and his fellow FAA-certified flying instructors occupy prime aviation real estate. The skies above their Thermal airport often draw pilots from other flight schools in the Palm Springs region, who flock to the area for the ideal practice conditions and absence of lines at sky tollbooths. The veteran instructors also take novice pilots on 20- to 30-minute flights that introduce them to the excitement being in a cockpit and the thrill of flying.

In bar classrooms outfitted with real equipment and experienced instructors, the students at Professional Bartenders School learn to mix, pour, and serve their way into the barkeeping industry. Courses ranging from six hours to two weeks instill pupils with the tenets of professional drinksmanship, such as free pouring, drink recipes, and customer service. Students fill glasses with spurts from soda guns, simulated liquor from real bottles, and garnishes carved from organic plastic lemons as they learn drink recipes and mixing techniques. Upon certification, newly minted bartenders receive lifetime job-placement help, with access to a database of hospitality employers.

Created and run by Honda, one of the largest motorcycle manufacturers in the world, the Rider Education Center imparts riders of all ages with the skills and education needed to wrangle the handlebars of ATVs, dirt bikes, and motorcycles. MSF-certified instructors guide students through a hands-on curriculum that bestows riding fundamentals, safety techniques, and certifications. At the Colton ranch, the first Rider Education Center ever built, the sound of revving engines dissipates into the adjoining Environmental Learning Center, where 2 acres of traversable trails showcase five ecosystems—from woodlands to desert terrain to ramps made of clouds—featuring more than 2,500 plant species.

In 2003, the teaching staffs behind the Butler-Fearon and the O’Connor-Kennedy Schools realized something: though both academies nurtured the physical, mental, and competitive skills of scores of young Irish dancers, they could form a more robust program by combining forces. Once united, the team of Rose Fearon, Vincent O’Connor, and Kathleen O’Connor—each a certified Irish dance adjudicator—implemented a revised curriculum reaching students from both American coasts to the solid-ice skyscrapers of Ontario. Today, Butler-Fearon-O'Connor trains everyone from girls buckling their jig shoes for the first time to experienced adults, many of whom—such as 2011 world champion Emily Penner—have danced competitively at home or across the pond and landed spots on touring companies for shows such as Riverdance.

Focusing on perfecting traditional form and technique, classes are kept as small as possible, ensuring personalized attention from one of the school's 10 experienced, decorated instructors. Students also learn stamina, flexibility, and presentation, with an emphasis on avoiding motions that tend to draw judges' ire, such as clumsy arm placement and badgering the audience. Many locations also host more casual classes for adults and groups such as Girl Scout troops.