Dear Families,

We have settled into our summer rhythm here on campus, after a wonderful set of closing meetings with our staffulty last week. The meetings were celebratory and reflective - focused in equal parts on our gratitude for the exciting work that we got to do all school year with your wonderful children, and on ways in which we can continue to serve them even better next year. We focused a good deal of our reflection and planning on how to continue to deepen our work with student engagement next year.

As you recall, we began the year by sharing with students and families about our new tool - the engagement matrix. This tool helped us as a community this year to define the indicators of different types and levels of engagement, allowing us to support and coach students to set goals towards increased engagement.  Our Student Engagement Council, comprised of leaders from Academics, Res Life, the UAC team, the Dean of Students’ office, Health Center, Learning Support, and English Language Support, met weekly to discuss students of concern. For students struggling to demonstrate positive behavioral or relational engagement in academic or community life, Engagement Improvement Plans (EIPs) were crafted and shared at home. The EIPs helped us support students with actionable goals and strategies to more fully engage, and the partnerships with families were very helpful to ensure students could thrive!

Next year, our goal is to deepen our commitment to engagement coaching for all students, not just those struggling to demonstrate behavioral or relational engagement. We believe every student at EF Academy deserves to be better supported on their journey towards affective engagement - the type of engagement marked by feelings of joy, fulfillment, and purpose.  All the big and small decisions students make in academic, community, and residential life add up to the experience they take away from high school, and we want to help them embrace opportunities more fully and flourish!

We have a handful of leadership updates this year, and as we replace those roles, we are focused on unifying their work towards ensuring all students are coached and supported on their engagement journeys. As you already know, Dean Sean Rollolazo is relocating to Portugal for an amazing new adventure with his husband. Our rising Dean of Students, Sara McCarthy, is excited to focus on student engagement in her role as she leads the advisory program and the grade-level engagement coaches (formerly known as lead advisors!) You have also heard that Jim Sargent and his family will be moving down to San Diego where he will serve as the Director of College Counseling at The Bishop’s School. As Interim Director of University and Academic Counseling (UAC), Kyle Kurfirst will focus on student engagement by leading his team to more fully contribute to academic counseling for the students on their caseload - putting an even greater emphasis on the “A” in UAC!

In late May, the Washburn family shared that they will be moving on to new professional growth opportunities for both of them! We are so proud that our EF Academy leaders go on to do such amazing work! Erica Washburn leaves behind the incredible professional learning and growth system that she devised for our staffulty. And Ryan Washburn, our Director of Learning Support,  leaves behind the amazing infrastructure that he built to support students and families with their learning needs.  With Ryan’s departure, we are hard at work building even more robust systems for Learning Support and will begin the year with a bigger team in place to support our neurodiverse students. I will share more in our next monthly Family Newsletter, coming to your inbox on August 1!

Please enjoy a recap of the exciting conclusion to the school year in the “Campus Happenings” section below, including the amazing summary of college and university acceptances and matriculations for the Class of 2025!  We are so proud to now have 118 EF Academy Pasadena alumni out in the world doing incredible things, and we can’t wait to continue our joyful work here on campus together this fall. But first, we urge you to delight in your children, to ask them questions that lead to reflection, and to encourage conversation about goals for how to even more fully and joyfully engage in school next year!

Thank you for being part of our EF Academy family! Happy summer to you all!

Best,