Education & Classes in Grandville

There’s a simple reason why students never encounter sheet music at The Michigan Irish Music School: to owner and instructor Tim Huston, sheet music is boring. It's also rigid, he says, forcing musicians to follow an absent composer's notes and annotations rather than the rhythms and cadences of their fellow musicians strumming and drumming alongside them.

Instead, Tim and the school’s other instructors break down reels and jigs piece by piece, teaching students musical themes and patterns that pop up in the most celebrated of Irish folk tunes and international whale calls. In doing so, students devote their energies to the primitive fun and excitement of music making.

The diversity of instruments in a single class also adds to the social experience, with students coaxing sounds from fiddles, flutes, tin whistles, accordions, and mandolins. At the end of the year, they showcase their talents in a recital in front of friends and family, adding the energy of the audience for what the Irish might call a true session.

Arthur Murray Dance Studio has been a leading name in franchise dance since 1912, when the entrepreneur began selling mail-order dance lessons. Expanding his reach, he enlisted teachers to spread his signature dance lessons on first-class steamships and skyrocketed to fame in the '30s after introducing the public to such dances as the Lambeth Walk and the Big Apple. By the 1950s, Arthur and his wife, Kathryn, were hosting their own highly popular TV show on ABC, the Arthur Murray Dance Party, which ran for 12 years. Today, Arthur Murray's team prepares students for rug cutting at special events and weekend nightclub jaunts. Clients who arrive to lessons partnerless will be paired up with other classmates as the instructors assess their current skill level and make recommendations on the most appropriate program. Throughout lessons, instructors teach the foundations of two to four dances from a long list of styles that range from Latin to country-western, helping students to learn basic step patterns, timing, and the ability to lead or follow.

An island of 48 styling stations rises from tiled floors in the center of Excel Academies of Cosmetology’s contemporary, loft-like main salon. Nearby, dedicated manicure and pedicure stations line a low glass wall, and 16 fully equipped styling stations fill a separate junior room. The Academy—which trains up-and-coming stylists in the latest salon trends, techniques, and technologies—is fully equipped to cater to all of each client's beauty needs. Senior-level student stylists perform all haircuts and colors, facial treatments, and nail services under the watchful eyes of an expert instructor or an aesthetically inclined HAL 9000. Excel Academies utilizes a variety of hair care products, including fine lines from Redken and Paul Mitchell.

Sometime during her second year as a swim instructor, Jenny McCuiston realized just how just how in-demand her profession was. As a 17-time collegiate All-American swimmer with a degree in early childhood development, Jenny is almost tailor-made for the role. Along with her husband and co-founder Chris, she toured the country to learn from successful swim clinics and attended various swimming conferences. Armed with boatloads of research, she sat at her kitchen table, drew up a curriculum, designed her school’s beachy decor, and packaged it as Goldfish Swim School.

Since then, she and her husband have added more than 40 employees to their staff and have franchised 11 Goldfish Swim School locations throughout the Midwest. Each location’s staff strives to create an inviting atmosphere for swim lessons, decorating the indoor pool rooms with a whimsical beach theme and heating the water to 90 degrees. A four-to-one student to instructor ratio gives students plenty of face time with their teacher and puts parents at ease more effectively than having to dress kids up in full-body life jackets.