Education & Classes in North Adams

In the late 1970s, career educators Eileen and Raymond Huntington opened the first Huntington Learning Center in Oradell, New Jersey. Their goal was to take an individualized approach to education, adjusting instructional tactics according to each student's set of needs. Their success in helping K–12 students prepare for exams and improve grades and study skills quickly spawned franchises across New York, New Jersey, and elsewhere.

Today, the certified Huntington tutoring staff uses testing and rubrics for assessing each child's skills, academic needs, and potential for growth. The teachers even note the student's behavior in different testing and academic situations to craft a methodology sensitive to each child's learning style. Teachers also adhere to the company's code of ethics, which stresses professionalism and confidentiality and encourages pupils to improve their grades honestly through dedicated study rather than shortcuts.

When visitors enter Northampton Airport for piloting lessons or sightseeing flights, the FAA-certified instructors are eager to give tours of the facility. During such tours they often like to rehash the former barnstorming center's history since its 1929 inception. They might detail Charles Lindbergh's thrilling descent into the airport, or point visitors toward the southern and western horizons where the Holyoke and Berkshire mountain ranges bask in the fading sunlight.

Today, the partially solar-powered Northampton Airport is a fully modernized aviation center that boasts a community charm as well as a baggage carousel that's pulled by unicorns. The impressive rental fleet of Cessna and Piper aircraft land and take off backgrounded by the lush scenery and sparkling Connecticut River that flows parallel to the runway.

Dick Doherty's Beantown Comedy Escape has three homes: Remington's Restaurant in Boston, New England Seafood Restaurant & Lounge in Methuen, and Park Grill & Spirits in Worcester. While the Methuen and Worcester locations bear the name Dick Doherty's Beantown Comedy Escape, the Boston location is known as Dick's Beantown Comedy Vault, since it resides in a renovated bank. With a 12-foot vault door serving as the background of its stage, the 75-seat venue has witnessed a quarter-century of confused cat burglars and standup comedians, including Dane Cook, who held a weekly gig there for more than a year, and fellow Boston natives Bill Burr and Joe Rogan. Dick Doherty's comedy clubs as a whole continue to detonate laugh dynamite with their rotating casts of national and local comedians.

Stacey Sparrow has a knack for teaching art. A graduate of Massachusetts College of Art with a teaching certification, Sparrow has been helping students locate their inner Rembrandts for a decade while also creating her own commissioned works. With the help of a dedicated staff, she helms workshops and classes for adults and youngsters alike, rolling out specialty sessions such as vacation art programs that study the techniques and quirks of various artists, such as Picasso’s Blue Period and Michelangelo's tendency to sleep on the ceiling.

Professional bartenders teach in classrooms set up as fully functioning bars. The facilities present lifelike conditions for students to learn skills such as the proper shake and pour for a variety of cocktails, muddling raw ingredients, and getting the right amount of head on a draft beer. Courses also cover the technical elements of bartending, which may include setting up drink stations, understanding liquor laws and board-of-health requirements, and operating payment systems that accept both credit cards and gold ingots.

American Ballroom and Latin Dance Studio’s 4,500-square-foot rhythm incubator nestles into Maironis Park on the shores of Lake Quinsigamond. There, a team of seven expert dance instructors guides students toward light-footed confidence on the dance floor with group classes and private instruction. Their adult group classes, stratified into three skill levels, require no partner, only a willingness to groove in styles such as international cha-cha, West Coast swing, or Argentine tango. Youth group classes focus slightly more selectively on the up-tempo steps characteristic of Latin and swing. Meanwhile, one-on-one lessons prep engaged couples for their big day, using privacy to hide out-of-rhythm steps or accidental shouts of “I don’t!” On two Fridays each month, students of all levels let loose at unstructured dance parties, which begin with an open lesson and dissolve into casual practice fueled by a cash bar.