Summer Success

You could hear the giggling from outside the classroom at Rossmoor Elementary School in the Los Alamitos Unified School District. 

Once inside, the fun of learning Brazilian Jiu Jitsu was on full display. About a dozen elementary school students were standing around the edge of a mat while the instructor held a pool noodle in the air. Students scurried past him as fast as they could to avoid being hit, gently, with the foam toy. They squealed with joy after making it across untouched. 

Another nearby classroom was bursting with creativity. Students had collected dry leaves from outside and were incorporating them into their hand-drawn comic books in a popular class called Comic Book Bazaar. The course was taught by Los Alamitos High School alumnae Gabrielle Vida, an elementary school teacher in Arizona who has traveled home for the past few summers to participate in the SEI.

"I just really enjoy teaching this class," Vida said.

In another class, students were enjoying layers of a tasty parfait they had just made in a cooking class. David Robles, their enthusiastic instructor, asked students if they remembered the technique they had learned to sweeten fruit in their dessert. 

“Maceration!,” he reminded the kids as they licked their lips and smiled.

These are just a few examples of the 90 classes that were offered during the 16th annual Summer Enrichment Institute put on by the Los Alamitos Education Foundation, the nonprofit partner of the Los Alamitos USD. This summer, LAEF held two roughly four-week sessions of the SEI featuring classes covering science, art, cooking, sports, gardening, and much more.

The program is a partnership between LAEF and the district and serves mostly students enrolled at the district's nine campuses in Rossmoor, Seal Beach, and Los Alamitos. It was a record-setting summer for the SEI with more than 1,000 students participating.

“We’re back and bigger than ever,” LAEF Executive Director Carrie Logue exclaimed. Spotlight Schools was invited to tour the institute along with Superintendent Andrew Pulver, Ed.D., and Board of Education President Marlys Davidson and Trustee Chris Forehan in June. (Full disclosure: I am a past and current donor to LAEF.)

The SEI also offers Jump Start academic classes for every grade level geared for students looking to prepare for the upcoming school year. “[Jump Start] is not meant to be a review,” Logue explained. “It’s meant to give kids a preview of what’s to come.”

The SEI classes had usually fewer than twenty students, lasted about two hours, and cost $175 for one class, with generous discounts for each additional class. Some required an additional materials fee. Many courses were taught by Los Alamitos USD teachers. That includes Wendy Hearn, a reading and language arts teacher at McAuliffe Middle School. She taught a course called Tech-Tastic Adventures, where students learned the fundamentals of coding and Google Slides.

Each year, new courses are added in response to demand from families and ideas from instructors, Logue said. This year, McGaugh Elementary School art teacher Anya Cappon taught the inaugural session of an art puppet production class. The students designed and built their own unique puppet character, wrote and produced a puppet show that they then performed.

Some of the classes also involve a partnership with local businesses. For example, the SEI ukulele class was taught by an instructor with Blue Box Music, a music studio located in Los Alamitos.

In addition to offering enrichment for elementary school students, the SEI also provides opportunities for middle and high school students to volunteer. Dozens of student volunteers helped out in classrooms and on the playing fields to assist instructors with lessons, gaining valuable experience while serving their community.

LAEF is also helping facilitate more than 25 sports and activities camps and clinics for students throughout the summer, including the Los Alamitos High School baseball clinic for first through eighth graders which takes place later this month.

College Application Workshop offered by LAEF

In addition to the SEI, LAEF is also offering programs for high school students this summer. That includes a new program aimed at rising seniors. The College Application Workshop takes students through the steps to apply to college. They are given tools for researching campuses, tips on the essay writing process, as well as individualized feedback on their applications. The workshop cost only $10 to attend, thanks to LAEF fundraising efforts, and is being led by counselors at Los Alamitos High School. 

Logue said that additional college application workshops will be offered this upcoming school year as part of LAEF's "mission to prepare every child in our district for college and beyond." LAEF also offered a Driver's Ed course for students at least 15.5 years old at a cost of $150.

A new season of enrichment opportunities start back up in the fall. LAEF will release a schedule for its after-school classes on August 7. For more information visit https://laef4kids.org/afterschool/.

Editor's Note: The author is a donor to the Los Alamitos Education Foundation.