EF Academy Pasadena

Monthly Family Newsletter: November 2024

Dear Families,

I can hardly believe that I am already writing the November 1 Family Newsletter! Time is flying by so quickly, with kids and adults engaged in amazing classes, advisory events, dorm life, Wellness Wednesdays, clubs, sports, weekend activities and more! October was a very full month with a lot to celebrate and November promises to be a great month ahead.

As you all know, we had a very successful inaugural round of Fall Immersion Trips in mid-October. Your children showed up for this experience in every possible way - they were flexible, curious, kind, and committed to deepening their relationships with their grade level classmates. And our chaperones were intrepid student-centered leaders, offering care and modeling engagement every minute of those intense days on the road. I am so grateful for the way this community of students and adults embraces opportunities!

This past week we hosted our first round of family/advisor conferences of this school year. These conferences provide a unique opportunity for your student to drive a conversation about their growth and learning as they set goals for the rest of the semester. As a school that is focused on empowering students and giving them the confidence and skills to be self-advocates and creative problem-solvers, these student-led conversations are a really key component of both building and demonstrating those skills. I am pleased to share that nearly 90% of families took advantage of this opportunity to connect with the school. In the coming weeks, our UAC team will work hard to get meetings set up with families who missed this first opportunity to review the Q1 progress reports with a member of their student’s care team. Our goal every year has been to ensure that 100% of families have that high touch opportunity to better understand their student’s feedback, so that the support from school and from home can be unified.

Last night a group of our students, led by our Campus & Community Service Club and Social Justice Club, engaged in a combined act of service and the American tradition of trick-or-treating. As students went door to door to enjoy receiving some candy, they also picked up filled bags of canned foods for our food drive. We now have an impressive haul of food to bring to our partners at Friends in Deed! We are so proud of our students for driving this initiative, and now they are pivoting their focus to collecting toys via a toy drive for the upcoming holiday season.

Along with the publication of this newsletter, November 1 marks the Early Action (EA) and Early Decision (ED) application deadline for many colleges and universities. The UAC team would like to recognize the ongoing effort, perseverance, and dedication of our seniors as they share their stories and accomplishments with universities around the world. We are all so proud of our seniors as they reach this first application milestone! This year, approximately 62% of our seniors have chosen at least one EA or ED decision plan for a total of 208 EA or ED applications being sent out from EF Academy Pasadena (an 89% increase from last year!). We are happy to see this growing trend, as the possible advantages of applying early are important to consider. From increased acceptance rates to the relief of possibly wrapping up the college process before winter break, our UAC team works hard to get many of our students to consider hitting this first early deadline! For more information on what’s happening in the UAC office this month, check out this update!

We are currently in the midst of our transition from fall sports to winter sports. Our Varsity Girls Volleyball team and Boys & Girls Cross Country teams had wonderful fall seasons of growth and improvement, and we are so proud of their hard work and commitment. Our sports program continues to respond to student interests, and as we launch our winter season we have our Varsity Boys Soccer team alongside a growing Boys Basketball Program with both a Varsity and a Junior Varsity team. We are so thrilled to have our first sport grow to the size where we are able to field two teams! Meanwhile, Cheer is the most popular sport for girls this winter season, and we’re excited to respond to this interest by transitioning this existing club into a formal sport.

We are also preparing to transition to our winter clubs on November 4. As you recall, this year we are thrilled to offer our students additional ways beyond our sports teams to demonstrate high commitment, through our high commitment clubs. In the winter season E-Sports, Robotics, Theater Production, and Yearbook will run as high commitment clubs allowing students the opportunity to invest fully in an act of teamwork with a shared goal! We are really looking forward to our Theater department’s performances of our 2nd annual Fall Play, Clue, coming up the week of December 2. The theater production club will then pivot to auditions and rehearsals for our Spring Musical!

Students who are not enrolled in a sport or high commitment club, sign up instead for two enrichment clubs each season. Our enrichment clubs for the winter season include:

• Art & Design

• Asian Culture Club

• Campus and Community Service

• Crafting

• Creative Writing

• Fix It Club

• Game Design Workshop

• Girls Basketball Club

• Investment/Stock Market Club

• Model United Nations

• Music Ensemble

• Outdoor Education

• Outdoor Sports (ranging from frisbee and ping pong to football and pickleball!)

• Quick Snack Hack Club

• Social Justice

• Speech and Debate

• Student Media Services

Our Activities department has also been hard at work putting together our November Activities Calendar. A highlight of the off-campus excursions and their relative price point is shown below. You will notice an especially great set of offerings over the Thanksgiving weekend!

• Saturday, Nov 1 – Ice Skating ($)

• Saturday, Nov 9th – Beverly Hills and Rodeo Drive (free)

• Saturday, Nov 16th – Warner Brothers Studio Tour ($$)

• Saturday, Nov 23rd – Hollywood Sign Hike (free)

• Thursday, Nov 28th – Six Flags ($$)

• Friday, Nov 29th – South Coast Plaza (free)

• Saturday, Nov 30th – UCLA vs Fresno State Football Game ($)

I always enjoy the opportunity to provide you with a holistic overview of life on campus in my section of these monthly newsletters! To follow me this month, the featured author is our Deputy Head of School for Residential and Community Life, Annie Hall. The areas of campus that Annie oversees include our Dean of Students Office, Activities Team, Health Center, and Residential Life Team. Annie is pleased to share today a little bit more about each of these teams and their amazing work from 1st semester so far!

As always, thank you so sincerely for sharing your children with us. We have a wonderful and thriving campus community, and your children are the heartbeat of who we are. For those of you who live locally or who may be in California in December, please save the date for our annual Head of School-hosted Family Holiday Cocktail Party on Thursday, Dec 5 from 4:00pm - 7:00pm at The George on E Washington Blvd.

With Appreciation,

Co-author note:

Dear Families,

We have enjoyed spending time with your students since they arrived in August and watching as confidence grows and friendships blossom. Our Residential and Community Life team have been busy doing things that bring our students together and help them to connect with each other through their shared experience of learning and living here.  We have had lots of fun seeing students building rapport through sharing, relaxing, and working together outside of class. It is wonderful to see the dynamics of each grade level and across grade levels as students connect with each other and we look forward to seeing how our community grows and develops.

This month’s newsletter has information from the different teams on campus that support residential and community life. Special thank you to Dean Sean and Dean Victor for their Community Life update below!

Health Center

Our Health Center Team consists of our Health Center Coordinator, Mr E., our School Nurses, Nurse Christianna and Nurse Natalie, our Mental Health Counselor, Ms Nikki, and Well-being Specialist, Ms Collat.  The team goes above and beyond to support students when they are feeling unwell and they provide the reassuring and appropriate care that students need to set them back on the path to recovery. Students can often be found stopping by the Health Center to have a consultation and cup of tea, checking in to seek advice, or sometimes just to say hello. One much-loved member of the team is Guava, our Black Labrador, who provides a relaxing and calming source of energy for students.  Guava can often be found surrounded by small groups, sometimes even queues, of students, who are keen to spend quality time with her!

Residential Life

It has been wonderful to see our students settling into the dorms, establishing community norms and personalizing their rooms to make it feel like home.  Our House Parents and Residential Advisors have been organizing community activities within their dorm building and corridor communities to help students to get to know each other and spend time together. This has included movie nights, soccer games, cooking and baking together, and much more!

Our House Parents are committed care-takers and they take our responsibility of ‘in loco parentis’ to heart. House Parents regularly meet with each of their cohort members to build relationships and ensure that students are learning how to communicate openly and access any support they might need. Corridor and dorm building meetings bring students together to build a sense of community through shared experiences and planning activities to do things together. We focus on helping students to engage with the many opportunities available to participate in on-campus activities and off-campus excursions throughout the week. As you have seen in all of our monthly newsletters, our Activities Team have a well-planned schedule for a variety of things for students to engage with after school and at weekends, often prompted by students’ interests.

Activities

Since the start of this academic year, we have had a wide range of activities, events and excursions for students to engage in. Our Activities Team advertises these in many ways, including a large physical wall calendar in Cena for all to see the month ahead, displays on screens around the campus, information on the Residential & Community Life Canvas page, and regular announcements during lunch. All students are welcome and they can sign up for any of these activities, events and excursions through Orah. We recommend that students sign up early as some excursions have a maximum capacity and can fill up fast!

Community Life, by Dean Sean and Dean Victor

Our Dean of Students duo has been in awe of how beautiful, vibrant, and caring our community is becoming. Our monthly Community Meetings are building school spirit by highlighting the amazing leaders, athletes, and project coordinators of our student body, while fostering the connections that span class years. Our weekly Class Year Meetings serve as an in-person hub for important announcements and help strengthen a sense of class year pride. It has been awesome to see this pride and community solidify since the Fall Immersion Trips, and we are looking forward to more positive growth as the year progresses with our Student Council Grade Representatives now being the co-pilots of these meetings!

Alongside our community of educators, both within and beyond the classroom, we have been honing in on student engagement. We desire that students find multiple areas of school in which they can be affectively engaged—to find fulfillment and joy. Whether that’s learning more about their favorite subject, on an excursion to an iconic LA destination, in the dorm lounge unwinding by working on a 1000-piece puzzle with, or scoring a 3-pointer on the basketball court, we find happiness in providing opportunities for our students to be happy. For our students who need support with their behavioral engagement, we enact our restorative justice practices by redirecting and skill-building. Reflection, emotional regulation, and help-seeking are all skills that will help them successfully navigate high school and beyond.

Thank you for taking the time today to learn more about the incredible Residential and Community Life teams!  These are truly the people who make this campus feel like a home away from home for our students.  As a reminder, if you ever need to contact any of these teams, please refer again to the Communication Info Sheet for Families.

Best,