Education & Classes in West Hills

When other kids played in the street, imagining lives as astronauts or cops, Leslie McKenna played in the kitchen, already a chef in her heart. Her childhood passion persisted, earning her a degree in Culinary Arts from Johnson & Wales University, praise in the pages of Bon Appétit for her pastas and desserts, and a job as Bob Hope’s private chef. In 2005, she decided to share her love with a new generation of aspiring culinary artists, so she founded Chefs, Inc. as a place to learn, cook, and have fun.

Today, her school hosts a wide array of cooking classes, when it isn’t occupied as a film set by shows such as Millionaire Matchmaker. The classes range from Julia Child’s classic French recipes to a dipping-sauce course focusing on grilled and fried eats slathered in custom condiments. She even teaches a knife-skills class, preparing students to slice and dice food like a professional, quickly chopping money or deftly cracking the fruit of the money tree to reveal the paycheck inside.

The Los Angeles School of Comedy fills its studio spaces with classes in standup comedy, improv, and film and television acting. Resident comics Sunda Croonquist and James Harris share the knowledge they use at gigs at the Laugh Factory and writing for television, guiding their charges from building their acts to their first performances at Hollywood comedy clubs. Actors David Kano and Victor Cruz train screen workers of all ages in character development, scene study, and mock auditions.

ComedySportz Los Angeles, LA's longest-running stage show, showcases sidesplitting talents in competitive team-based improv spats populated by Hollywood's up-and-coming comedians. Free-wheeling funnypeople forage for laughter every Friday and Saturday at 8 p.m.—with a 10:30 p.m. late show in some months—as well as a 7 p.m. Sunday show and a college team performance 8 p.m. each Thursday. In the signature ComedySportz Los Angeles shows, comedic squads square off against one another in a some-holds-barred refereed stage match that is surprisingly appropriate for all ages. In an effort to keep humor clean, referees and audience members can call for the brown-bag foul, which puts offensive performers into bagged timeouts to think about both what they've done and what it feels like to be a grocery item.

From their home base at Van Nuys Airport, the certified flight instructors at Encore Flight apply what they learned as students at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University to the training of new pilots-to-be through everything from discovery flights to full pilot's certification. The crew goes to work aboard an extensive fleet of Piper and Cessna light-sport aircraft, or doles out instruction while safely planted on the ground inside two FAA-approved flight simulators, one a stationary apparatus and the other a full-motion Redbird FMX. Fully enclosed in the Redbird's cockpit, students experience the motions of actual flight on all three axes and enjoy more than 200 degrees of wrap-around visuals, helping them spot hazards such as oncoming flocks of birds or commuting superheroes.

Growing up, Katie London helped her mother cook weekly meals for dining rooms full of friends and family, employing diverse recipes inherited from her Italian and Jewish grandparents. So when she decided to share her culinary skills with the world, she kept things in the family, enlisting her father, Jeff, a former CPA, to help her establish Katie's Cooking School.Staged in a classroom that mimics a home kitchen with its residential appliances and cabinets, Katie's classes for kids and adults emphasize practical skills and simple recipes that the students can recreate at home or in the kitchen section of the nearest Home Depot. The class schedule rotates on a monthly basis, adopting a new seasonal, geographic, or dietary theme each time. Past projects have included selections from around the world such as homemade pasta with meat sauce, Danish pancake balls, and moo shu chicken.