Education & Classes in Selma

"If you make it, you will taste it" is the motto founders Julie Fabing Burleson and Suzy Vinson Nettles envisioned when they created Young Chefs Academy. In addition to giving youngsters hands-on exposure to culinary techniques, kitchen safety, eating etiquette, and table setting, the academy's philosophy ensures that kids like 10-year-old former veggie-hater Camille gain an appreciation for healthy homemade cuisine. With centers in more than 10 states, Young Chefs Academy enriches growing minds with engaging cooking classes, camps, and birthday parties that impart valuable life skills, such as self-reliance and how to trick a younger sibling into doing the dishes.

With eclectic backgrounds in ballet, Scottish Highland dancing, and environmental law, California Arts Academy co-owners and directors Julie Ann Keller and Christopher Campbell bring their students their own distinctive expertise and worldviews. Backed by a cadre of instructors, the duo strives to create a space where kids can freely express themselves through gymnastics and musical theater and can elaborate tap-dance routines that summon the ghost of Fred Astaire. Not content to just offer classes, Keller and Campbell regularly hold auditions for family-friendly performances, such as Pollyanna and Disney's The Little Mermaid Jr., where all who audition perform in front of a rapt audience.

The FAA-certified instructors at Future Eagles Aviation put clients behind the controls of actual aircraft as they teach them the ins and outs of aviation. Students amass skills such as navigation and cockpit familiarity on the ground in adventure flight school before lifting off in a Cessna 172 training aircraft for 30 minutes of flight time. Kids can also take to the sky during Future Eagles Aviation’s youth aviation summer camp, a weeklong foray into the world of cloud skimming and Peter Pan mimicry during which kids aged 10 and older practice on simulators and log real flight hours in training aircraft.

Founded with the goal of outfitting its pupils with the skills necessary to excel in the spa and salon industries, Milan Institute of Cosmetology deploys a rigorous curriculum that emphasizes professionalism and hands-on learning to train fledgling cosmetologists and aestheticians around the country. As the most important aspect of the course of study, student salons and spas serve as a real-world classroom wherein nascent beauticians—under the careful supervision of their instructors—can practice their newly minted skills on humans or sentient mannequins. The beauty apprentices gussy up patrons head to toe via sundry lavish salon and spa services—specific to each location—that may include nail services, haircare, facials therapeutic massages, or nourishing body wraps.

At the age of 5, Rick Timmons decided that he couldn't live without a guitar. After three long years spent listening longingly to his mother's collection of Chuck Berry and Everly Brothers records, he finally got his wish. He started his first band, The Rodents, when he was 12, an age at which most kids are still in diapers. Since those formative years, Timmons has played hundreds of live shows at memorable locations such as New York City's CBGB and in Berlin the same week the wall came down.

Having worked alongside bands such as Neutral Milk Hotel and Of Montreal, Timmons is no stranger to modern bands. However, he prefers to expand students' repertoires with the influences behind their favorite artists. "Kids come in with a Kurt Cobain song they want to play, and I ask them, ‘Who did Kurt Cobain listen to?’” he says. “I track it all the way back, like a rock 'n' roll history."