School mixes education, careers

Fairfax Academy offers professional experience in arts, communications

Adults, prepare to be jealous.

Tucked between hallways and classrooms at Fairfax High School is an academy that offers students professional training and business skills in nine arts and communications fields, such as music composition, computer animation, fashion design and television broadcasting.

About 415 students from 20 of the 24 public high schools in Fairfax County are enrolled in Fairfax Academy this year, said Gwen Plummer, the academy's career experience specialist.

The academy is one of six professional training programs in the public school system, Plummer said. But unlike the other schools that provide training in health care or other technology trades, Fairfax Academy focuses solely on the arts and communications.

"We consider ourselves to be really career-experience teachers," Plummer said, adding that the program is geared to go beyond the how-to training students receive in other classrooms.

Although photography students usually are taught how to take a photo and use their cameras, at the academy they are taught how to use their skills in to forge a career as a photographer.

"Pre-professional is a good word to describe it," Plummer said of the program, which is in its 11th year.

In Chris Johnson's Music and Computer Technology class, students are composing two minutes of music for a movie. One used the 2000 film "Cast Away" as a muse, composing a song for a scene in the movie that had no music.

"My favorite part is probably that it's all project-based," Fairfax High senior Meredith Buck, 17, said of the class. "Students from all over the county are here, and we really get to focus on improving as musicians."

About 100 of the 415 students enrolled in the 90-minute classes are from Fairfax High.

In Roxanne Kaylor's Professional Graphics Studio, a class that focuses on graphics and animation, students are using living models and figures made of clay to create animation for video games and other applications.

"I was really interested in animation. I wanted to get in early," said Joe Montoya, 17, a senior in Kaylor's class. He recently completed a clay-animated project based on events at a circus.

About 97 percent of the academy's students go to college to continue their education in their fields of study, Plummer said.

A common thread among the programs at the academy is their use of technology. The photography studio, for example, is stocked with professional-quality digital cameras.

At the end of the year, the best projects from each class are honored at a ceremony, complete with red carpet, photographers and interviews provided by the broadcast students.

Second-year students spend months creating a composition, portfolio of their work or -- in the case of fashion -- a line of clothing. The projects are reviewed by professionals in the field, who give students feedback on their presentation and quality of work.

"We want them to understand how to present their work professionally," Plummer said.