Learning in Lake Hodges

Tutoring Club specializes in custom individualized tutoring sessions to enhance all levels of math, science, and language arts, college prep, and study skills for students in kindergarten through 12th grade. The skill assessment diagnoses each student's challenges and assesses his or her current knowledge before charting a brave new path toward wisdom. Over the course of the tutoring sessions, instructors focus and build on students' existing strengths to shore up knowledge and intellectual resourcefulness, closing academic gaps faster than front doors on vacuum salesmen.

At five years old, Kenny Mathews started learning piano right around the time he started learning to read. After touring with a rock n' roll band and teaching for two decades, he's not only musically literate—he's downright multi-lingual. His expertise encompasses trumpet, flute, saxophone, guitar, and ukelele—but his specialty is encouragement. Regardless of the instrument, he helps his students feel comfortable whether they're playing alone or performing for an audience of jittery grisly bears. He supplements his private lessons with recital prep, and remains a source of patient support for his pupils throughout their learning process.

PADI-certified instructors at Rick's Diving Locker teach students through a variety of underwater exploration techniques, opening up an entire world underneath the waves. After earning their PADI certifications, pupils can undertake more intensive coursework, such as wreck diving, underwater photography and search and recovery. Clients suit up with personal snorkeling gear and scuba suits, tanks, and flippers from brands such as SeaQuest, Diving Unlimited International, and Aqua Lung before setting out for undersea adventures or boudoir photo shoots. Chartered boat trips tour the local waters of Wreck Alley and the Los Coronado Islands, whereas faraway excursions to Beqa Lagoon in Fiji introduce travelers to 190 miles of coral, as well as colorful octopi and blue-ribbon eels.

Artist Rae Holton sees energy. The owner of Fire & Mud Studios and lifelong arts and nature enthusiast harnesses her inimitable sight of what she calls "the vein-like serpentine flow of atoms" to create offbeat works of art in a variety of mediums. Raised among artists and craftspeople, Holton has dabbled in jewelry making, photography, cooking, and ceramics, and cultivated a love for teaching after stints as a children's ski instructor and after-school program educator. Helming her pottery-focused studio, Holton helps others unleash their inner artists through classes and workshops as students learn the history of ceramics or how to remove the head off a classical sculpture with a hedge trimmer.

Before yoga was a household activity and people meditated to guard their minds from computers' thought-control beams, Yoga Center of California was already teaching students a rigidly traditional yet relaxed approach to yoga. Within the center—established more than four decades ago—instructors who have all trained for at least five years under internationally renowned guru Ramakrishna Ananda demonstrate time-honored poses and emphasize meditation techniques from each yogic style to help students find the technique that suits them best. These professors of flexibility also guard pupils against strain as they find each group's comfort zone, showing them how to relax a pose and modify positions to match skill levels. In each class, such as Hatha, Chinese, or prenatal yoga, two instructors introduce the philosophy of yoga while training participants in asanas and meditation. Yoga Center of California also teaches children in specialized classes.

Vindicating the famous acting teacher Constantin Stanislavski's claim that that "there are no small parts, only small actors," Mini Theatre Troupe gives every young student their moment in the spotlight. With over 20 years of experience in unleashing the inner extrovert in ages 2–12, Mini Theatre's instructors coax confidence, creativity, camaraderie, and friendly competition from young thespians through acting exercises, games, and mini performances in mini plays. Elder actors (aged 8–12) can partake in seasonal Broadway mini-musical programs, where stage presence, vocal techniques, and acting skills are acquired through a range of games, culminating in a 20- to 40-minute staged musical performance for faculty and family.