I write to you today from a very quiet campus, as we said goodbye to our students over a week ago and wrapped up all faculty, staff, and leadership team meetings early this week. I absolutely love this moment each year in schools, as it symbolizes the pivot from a focus on this last year to an all-in energy facing towards next year. As we close each school year we are deep in reflection about our students’ experiences and we ask ourselves important questions about how best to serve them next year. Our faculty and staff then take a very well-deserved break over the summer, where they can rest, recharge, and reflect; and our leadership teams spend the summer on the visionary and strategic work of structuring “Version 3.0” of our school. We have so much to look forward to next year, and I am thrilled to share some of that thinking with you today. But first I would like to take a look back at last year, our “Version 2.0” school year.
In our Version 2.0 we grew our adult team from 48 to 80 faculty and staff as we grew our student population from 122 students to 220 students. We added over 30 new or redesigned courses to our curriculum. These new courses included the launch of our Advanced Studies (Adv Stu) pathways as an additional set of rigorous course choices for students alongside AP courses, of which we also added 7 additional choices this year. In our Adv Stu courses, it was a thrill to watch our students be led by our expert faculty as they engaged with the advanced topics of Organic Chemistry, Virology, Differential Geometry, Fiction & Film, and Queer Histories. It was also exciting to see our EF Academy vans coming and going from campus constantly as our faculty launched our field study initiative, completing over 200 course-aligned field studies this school year!
In our Version 2.0 we became members of CIF, the competitive California Interscholastic Federation for high school sports, and we launched 8 Varsity teams in cross country running, volleyball, basketball, soccer, badminton, and beach volleyball. We also exploded our other co-curricular offerings with our launch of competitive FIRST robotics (in which our team won Rookies of the Year!), E-sports, theater (with our first ever fall play and spring musical), yearbook, and our very popular student media services team. We aligned our physical spaces to these amazing programmatic initiatives by outfitting four design labs this year -our Prototyping Lab, Fabrication Lab, Robotics Lab, and Media Lab were key spaces for both our curricular and co-curricular growth!
In our Version 2.0 we put even more significant focus on student wellness. We grew our health center team from 2 full time and one part time person to 5 full time people and added our campus therapy dog, Guava, to the mental health team! We reimagined our weekly work flows, forgoing study hours on Wednesday evenings for Wellness Wednesday programming. Our new Director of Wellness Programming launched a more intentionally designed advisory curriculum and partnered with our Res Life team to ensure wellness initiatives spanned day, evening, and weekend. We also modified our schedule to utilize a “modified block schedule,” which has its roots in both immersive learning and student wellness – reducing the cognitive load of task switching among multiple subjects each day or week by focusing on 3 courses at a time.
And, in our Version 2.0 we enjoyed having our very first senior class! With our first seniors came our first college application and admission seasons and our inaugural graduation. We could not be more proud of our first graduates, who had a world of opportunities available to them as they chose their next educational environments. We are excited to share our college & university acceptance and matriculation list . It was a beautiful moment for our school, and in many ways felt like a culmination of two years of work as a school community preparing our first graduates to thrive in the world beyond high school!
Within our school’s faculty and staff community, we talk about our Version 2.0 year as a significant “planting season.” We launched so many new courses, programs, and initiatives this year because we believed our students deserved to have access to all of those amazing academic and co-curricular opportunities as quickly as possible. And now we see our Version 3.0 as a year of nurturing the growth of all that was planted. On our mind as we prepare for Year 3, we are planning for:
Continued growth in our faculty and staff, bringing our total adult community to just around 100 people.
Continued growth in our student body, anticipating around 300 students this fall.
Growth in our athletic offerings to meet the interests and talents of our study body through the additions of possible new Varsity sports or Junior Varsity levels in our popular sports.
Continued focus on clubs like robotics, theater, yearbook, Model United Nations, community service, or speech and debate – those clubs that allow students to deepen their skills in collaboration, commitment, and performance or production. We will open next year with a new designation of “high commitment clubs” that will allow for these types of clubs to practice together more intensely five days per week.
Continued growth of our Innovation and Impact signature program, looking carefully at the experience of our students in their 3rd year of the program as we deepen our commitment to service learning.
The addition of 9 more new courses to our course catalog, with an emphasis on Advanced Studies courses and interdisciplinary courses.
Continued iterating as we optimize our modified block schedule, our advisory program, our Res Life curriculum, and our Wellness initiatives.
There is so much continued growth and optimization that next year will bring… but first, we are so excited that nearly 25% of our returning students have opted to participate in our inaugural online summer school this summer. I look forward to sharing stories of their experiences with you in a couple of months.
For returning families, you will hear from us again in an August family newsletter as we prepare to welcome students back to school for another wonderful year. For our alumni families, stay tuned for alumni communications next fall. We are committed to staying in touch with our alumni and their families as we grow what we hope will be a valued and cherished alumni network for EF Academy Pasadena.
We wish you and your children a wonderful summer break!
Dr. Sally Mingarelli
Head of School, EF Academy Pasadena