This course provides high school students with personalized, one‑on‑one oral Japanese tutoring designed to accelerate language proficiency. Through tailored instruction focusing on pronunciation, conversational fluency, and cultural context, students will strengthen speaking and listening skills in an immersive, supportive environment. Ideal for learners seeking to advance their communicative competence and confidence in Japanese.

This class will investigate what a Director does. Students will learn how a director tells HIS story through a camera lens. We will focus on understanding Camera Angles, Types of Shots, The 180 Degree Rule, The Rule of Thirds and Storyboarding. Each student will be responsible for the costumes, props, and locale of where to shoot the scene. All of these skills will be put into practice as each student takes a segment from the script and individually designs, develops, organizes, directs and films that segment.

EVERYONE loves a good story. Theater can help develop a story, but a movie can make a story come alive. Your child will come to understand the basics of film and movies by analyzing movie clips and thus learning styles of movie making. All students (and even the PLA staff) will participate in acting, building of sets, preparing costumes, and possibly even directing a scene. The class will use collaboration in team building as “every joint will supply” to develop this year’s production!

This class will focus on skills that will set the students up for success as they enter High School. In collaboration with their English course, students will learn a variety of writing and organizational strategies that include topics like effective communication through writing, note taking, planner organization, color coordination, time carving, binder organization and much more.

Did you know that design is all around us? And that you can use design to show people how to think about something? In the Design Fundamentals class, we’ll learn about the 5 key principles of design, history of visual communication and create projects that you can use in your everyday life to positively change the way people think about something you’re interested in.

"Students will investigate what a film director does in this class. This class will break down the basics of making a narrative script and how to produce a short film / movie. We'll also cover acting, set design, wardrobe design, and directing on set" - Daniel Pettit

In this class, students will be introduced to the Meet the Masters art curriculum. In this course we will explore art history and learn about famous master artists! We will learn, study, and practice the techniques these artists used to get a new understanding of how art is created and why it’s so significant.

"In this class, students will learn the basics of creating imaginative stories through scriptwriting. This introductory class will give a beginner's grasp on the foundation for writing scripts for theater, drama and film" - Daniel Pettit

"This 8-week journey will take students through the basics of color, perspective and design to give an introductory understanding of creating fine art. In addition to these lessons, students will have the opportunity to visit museums and create a plein air project. By exploring various mediums, this class will introduce the endless possibilities of art!" - Tom Guesno

Grab your pencils PLA students! In this class, we will dive into the Basics of Drawing. Starting February 2022, this 4 class course will teach students foundational line drawing, value, and perspective. By the end of the course, students will have a better understanding of techniques they can use to draw anything!