While our enrollment is a bit low this summer (I think most of our students were sent down to Mexico for the summer; the neighborhood is totally empty. Even the free lunch program at the park is empty), we are still seeing improvement in the students that are enrolled. We even added a new student to our roster this week.
I continue to see improvement the students that were coming to LIST during the school year and have continued this summer. Each student has improved in reading and math skills, even from the end of the school year until now. I have noticed for one student, that his reading has drastically improved. He came to me not being able to read words like cat and hat at the beginning of the school year, and at the end of the year, if he could not read a word by sight, he used the skills of blending to do so. Now, he knows by sight words that previously he had to sound out; his reading has become much more fluent. For another student, I’ve seen great progress in math; he is starting to memorize his addition and subtraction facts. Both of these student have very supportive parents that work with them outside of school and outside of LIST.
The new student that started attending this week is a brother to one of our regulars and will be entering first this coming school year. Just this week, he overcame his shyness and has started attending. He has some learning disabilities, but has a good foundation since he knows almost all the letters and the letter sounds. With this student, I will work on blending skills (sounding words out) and numbers as these are the areas he needs help with. It may take some time for us to develop a good working relationship, but I am confident he will benefit from his time at LIST, just like his brother has.
Some unfortunate news, due to our low enrollment, and seemingly lack of children in the community this summer, we have had to cancel our first LIST art class. Hopefully, we can offer something similar during the school year; I think the students would really benefit from a class specifically focusing on art.
Finally, we were able to sell a number of donated items on ebay and we were able to make nearly $300! Thanks to our donor and to any of our friends that bid on our items; I understand several people were outbid!
