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Dear Families,
I am thrilled to write our first official family newsletter of the 2024-2025 school year! You should expect a newsletter from campus near the beginning of each month during the school year. The goal of these newsletters is to provide important campus updates, celebrate accomplishments, announce new programs, and educate families about life on campus. Each month there is a letter from me followed by an update from a featured author which aligns to important programming or events that we want parents thinking about and talking about with their children that month. This month’s featured author is Jim Sargent, our Director of University and Academic Counseling (UAC).
In my portion of this first newsletter of the year I am excited to:
Celebrate successes from our inaugural EF Academy Online Summer School,
Share a recap of Arrival and Welcome Days,
Describe exciting programmatic updates for Year 3,
Set expectations for 2-way communication between families and the school, and
Identify ways that you can help your student engage more fully in academic, community, and residential life at our school.
Thank you for engaging with this very newsy newsletter!
EF Academy’s First Ever Online Summer School
Summer of 2024 was not a complete rest for all of our faculty and students, as 36 students and 8 faculty members and University and Academic Counselors (UACs) participated in our inaugural Online Summer School! 26 students enrolled in one of our credit-earning courses in Integrated Math 2, Spanish, Mandarin, US History, Foundations of Health and Wellness, or Comprehensive Dimensions of Health. For these 26 students, they elected to use the summer to accelerate their progress through some of our required classes in order to open up room in their schedule during the school year to take more electives or to double up in a subject area about which they are most passionate. We are so pleased that this pathway is now available to our students, and we encourage all students and families to consider the benefit of using the summer to access even more of our curriculum! With online classes that are largely asynchronous and featuring time-zone-sensitive, synchronous, small-group sessions, these classes can be taken from anywhere around the world.
We also had 10 students enroll this summer in an enrichment course in College Essay Writing, taught by our UAC team. We are thrilled to extend the reach of our UAC programming beyond the school year so that our rising seniors can have the opportunity to begin Grade 12 with some college application materials already in draft form.
In short, our first summer of our Online Summer School was a wonderful success and we can’t wait to broaden our offerings and serve even more students in Summer 2025! Please encourage your student to speak to their UAC if they are interested in discussing how including summer in their course selection strategy might give them greater access to all of the amazing elective and upper level classes they desire to take.
Arrival and Welcome Days Revisited
On August 24 & 25 we enjoyed welcoming our boarding students and many of their families to campus. Our Arrival Days were action packed as students got settled into their rooms and met their roommates, got their new student IDs, and, in many cases, took care of student visa paperwork, arranged for a US phone number, and more! On Sunday, August 25 we enjoyed getting our boarding and day students together on campus for the evening while our local families joined families from around the world for a cocktail party at my home. It was wonderful to meet so many families face to face and to discuss your hopes and enthusiasm for the school year ahead.
On August 26 we had our Welcome Day programming for both students and families. Families attended a number of key sessions in the morning to educate them about the philosophical underpinnings of our programs along with policies, procedures, and useful information that can help families support their students from at home. Shared below are the slide decks that were used at each Parent Welcome Day session that morning. For those of you who were in attendance, these will serve as a great review of what you learned. For those of you who were unable to attend, these provide a detailed look at how campus leadership spent those sessions with families.
Introduction to the Engagement Matrix, presented by Dr. Sally Mingarelli, Head of School
Academic Overview, presented by Dr. Kaela Clapp, Academic Dean
Student Life Overview, presented by Annie Hall, Deputy Head of School for Residential and Community Life
In the afternoon, families attended the Student Resource Fair to learn about our academic support resources, health center services, athletics, activities, and more. The day closed with mix & mingle events with our University and Academic Counseling team and with our Academic Leadership Team. For those of you who were unable to attend, please rest assured that our ongoing communication and parent education coming from campus will provide the information you need in order to fully understand our school and best support your child!
Year 3 Updates
It is hard to believe that we are in Year 3 of EF Academy Pasadena already! It has been a thrilling first two years, culminating in our first graduation last May. As we head into our third year, we are focused on iteration - by which we mean amplifying the access to and impact of our programs. We are so excited to build upon all of the amazing innovation from last year!
Year 3 themes include:
Growth. We begin Year 3 with 262 students and 96 faculty and staff members, compared to last August when we opened with 200 students and 75 faculty and staff. We are so excited about how our co-curricular programs and campus activities are enhanced by student growth and we are thrilled to welcome even more talented, passionate adults to our community this year!
Last year was our first year participating in the competitive California Interscholastic Federation (CIF) high school athletics program. This year we are official members of the CIF Prep League and we are committed to growing our sports offerings beyond the awesome Varsity teams we launched last year (Boys & Girls Cross Country, Boys & Girls Volleyball, Boys & Girls Basketball, Boys & Girls Badminton, Boys Soccer, and Girls Beach Volleyball). Driven by student interest, we will add sports as we are able to fill teams - either through addition of Junior Varsity squads or by adding brand new sports to our offerings.
Commitment. Watching our student-athletes benefit significantly from their rigorous commitment to athletic team participation last year, we decided to provide additional opportunities for students to practice their serious commitment to co-curriculars. Launching “high commitment clubs” this year, students in Robotics, E-Sports, Theater, and Student Media Services will get the opportunity to build, compete, rehearse, and learn as teams this season on a 5-day per week schedule. Each season, various clubs will have the opportunity to run at the “high commitment” level, giving our students more and more opportunities to demonstrate commitment to a team and work together on rigorous shared goals outside of the classroom.
Experiential Learning. Last year we launched our Field Study initiative, wherein every course committed to taking students on at least two field studies across the school year. As a result we surpassed 200 field studies last school year, with students and faculty getting off campus and out into the greater Los Angeles area to enhance learning opportunities. With our fleet of EF Academy vans and our custom built bell schedule that supports field study, we are keen to continue our focus on field study this year, looking to amplify our cultivation of lasting partnerships with educational, arts, research, and STEM institutions in our vicinity.
Our biggest new development in experiential learning this year is the launch of our Grade Level Fall Immersion Trips. These mandatory trips are a crucial part of our commitment to community building. Please pay close attention to emails with itinerary information and permission forms that will be coming your way this month! We can’t wait to take our students to:
Grade 9: Wonder Valley Outdoor Camp (Oct 12 - Oct 15)
Grade 10: STEM Tour of San Francisco (Oct 12 - Oct 15)
Grade 11: Peaceworks Service Learning in San Diego (Oct 12 - Oct 15)
Grade 12: Las Vegas and National Parks (Oct 12 - Oct 16)
Engagement. We are very excited to focus our collective energy on supporting student engagement this year. Please review the engagement matrix presentation to better understand the vocabulary we will be using this year in discussions with your students and with you! In my final section of this newsletter, I will share my first advice for how you can utilize the engagement matrix to support your students from home.
2-way Communication Expectations Between Families and the School
Clear, caring, and timely communication between families and the school is a closely held value for us here on campus. We commit to providing you frequent updates about your student and about campus life, and we want you to feel confident and comfortable reaching out to people on campus when you have a question or a need. We are pleased to provide this crucial Communication Info Sheet to help you anticipate the timing and cadence of crucial communications that will come from campus and to provide you key details for how to contact people on campus. I highly recommend you bookmark this page or print out this document, which serves as both a communication calendar and a school directory.
Supporting Engagement from Home
In each monthly newsletter this year, I will share some advice for how you can utilize the engagement matrix in conversations with your child to best support their pursuit of joy, fulfillment, and purpose at school. This month I want to focus on how you can best support your student’s integration into community life on campus.
We believe that selecting co-curriculars that align to personal interests, provide meaningful challenge, and instill the mindset to commit to group goals is an important part of building towards affective engagement. As your child commits to their sports or clubs each season, ask them meaningful questions about their choice: Why do you think this sport/club is the right choice for you? What are you hoping to learn? What are you hoping to contribute? How are you hoping your participation will make you feel?
We believe that participation in school activities is an important building block towards relational engagement. Please encourage your child to participate fully in our activities programming - from off-campus excursions to on-campus events, these opportunities to connect and build relationships matter. Whether boarding or day, all students have equal access to the information about weekly activities via announcements at class meetings, community meetings, and at lunch; along with postings on the TV screens around campus, on Orah and on Canvas. Please help guide your students towards these resources and platforms as you ask questions about how they might engage each week.
To help you support your student this month, as they build the independence to track these events on their own, a summary of currently planned evening and weekend activities for the remainder of September is below (please note that schedules are subject to possible changes):
Wednesday, September 4th
Event: Wellness Wednesday Evening: Getting Organized
Friday, September 6th
Event: First athletic home game of the year – Girl’s Volleyball
Saturday, September 7th
Excursion: Santa Monica Pier
Wednesday, September 11th
Event: Wellness Wednesday Evening Event
Friday, September 13th
Excursion: Boomer’s Arcade Park
Saturday, September 14th
Excursion: Outdoor Education – Kayaking at Laguna Beach
Excursion: LA Galaxy vs LAFC Soccer Game
Wednesday, September 18th
Event: Wellness Wednesday Evening Event
Friday, September 20th
Excursion: Mini Golf
Saturday, September 21st
Excursion: Adventure Lagoon Waterpark
Wednesday, September 25th
Event: Wellness Wednesday Evening Event
Saturday, September 28th
Excursion: Disneyland
Sunday, September 29th
Excursion: Angel’s Baseball Game
That is all from me this month. Thank you for entrusting us with your lovely children. We are so happy to have them back with us for another fantastic year!
Best,
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Dr. Sally Mingarelli
Head of School, EF Academy Pasadena
Co-author note:
Dear EF Academy Pasadena Parents and Families,
As we welcome our third school year—our very first with alumni—I want to take a moment to reflect on the incredible journey of our pioneering Class of 2024 and look ahead with excitement toward all that’s in store for our students this year.
In May, we celebrated our first-ever graduation, launching 53 seniors on to amazing destinations across the world. Most of them have now embarked on their next chapter, pursuing their passions and dreams at exactly the right place for them. We couldn’t be prouder of their achievements, and they serve as a testament to the joy, adventurousness, and resilience that we hope all our students will take with them into the world.
The Class of 2024 enrolled at an extraordinarily diverse range of universities , showcasing the breadth of their talents and interests. Some are at nearby institutions like Occidental College, the University of Southern California, and UC Santa Barbara. Others found their way to renowned global universities like the University of British Columbia and New York University. Still more are in specialized programs at leading schools in their disciplines, like fashion design at the Fashion Institute of Technology or motorsports engineering at Purdue University. Our graduates are scattered across multiple continents, thriving in the environments that best fit their individual aspirations. While you’ll find many of these names on rankings of top universities, one ranking matters most: each student found the #1 university for them.
That first class left our community some amazing gifts: they helped our students learn about a variety of universities, their application history provides us with data to support wise strategic decision making by future applicants, and—let’s be honest—some of their late nights in the dorm on the day of application deadlines offered some clear examples of the relationship between proactive engagement, student wellbeing, and admission results. We’re so proud of them, and grateful for their example.
Looking ahead to this school year, I want to help you understand the personalized and regular support that students and families can expect from our team. UACs will meet with each student monthly, providing timely and tailored guidance to help them navigate their academic progress and trajectory toward graduation and beyond. After each meeting, you’ll receive a summary along with guidance and insights on your student’s next steps.
In contrast with many schools’ approach to college counseling, where the work with students doesn’t begin until halfway through grade 11, UACs have these consistent future-focused meetings with every student from their first days on campus. In the semester ahead, in addition to some early university exploration, students in grades 9 through 11 can look forward to the following meetings:
September – Review of courses, extracurricular activities, and goals for the year
October – Review of Q1 progress reports and strategies for the rest of the semester
November – Planning for summer 2025 experiences that support future goals
Beyond these regular 1-on-1 sessions, our office also offers programming focused on all facets of the journey to university: building a university list; writing application essays; completing the Common App and institution-specific applications like the UC, Cal State, and UCAS applications; upwards of 100 visits from university admission officers; and much more. We also have a consistent presence in study hall and campus community life, prioritizing our commitment to being accessible to students who need our support as they make decisions about their future plans.
We also believe that we can best serve our students when we partner effectively with parents and families to help them understand the university admission process and how students can best position themselves for success. To that end, we are excited to announce three upcoming parent sessions to share grade-level specific information and resources. These events will happen in-person on campus, and they will be recorded and sent to all parents, wherever you are in the world.
Grade 12 – Here and Now: Supporting Your University Applicant
September 12, 7:00-8:30pm
Grade 11 – University Admission Overview & Key Decision Points
December 9, 7:00-8:30pm
Grades 9 & 10 – Looking Ahead to the University Admission Experience
February 12, 7:00-8:30pm
We are thrilled to partner with you in this journey and are confident that our EF Academy students are well on their way toward achieving amazing things this year and beyond.
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Dr. Sally Mingarelli
Director of University and Academic Counseling, EF Academy Pasadena
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