End of the School Year

Our school year program is drawing to a close here at LIST and by the end of next week, we will have completed nearly 600 tutoring sessions this year! That makes for close to 6800 total session since we opened our doors five years ago!
This year has been a bit different in that some of our long time attendees had to stop coming for various reasons. We are finding that if our students start attending LIST in the first or second grade level, they are more than ready to move into Junior High without much help from us. Many of our students are going to charter schools that have built in after school tutoring as well. So, it was sad to see our students move on from us, but we are so excited to see the great work that they can now do easily on their own. Even though we saw some attrition of students, we still maintain a waiting list of 20-30 students. So while some students left for various reasons, there were many more students to take their place.
Some of the highlights of the year were our Delicious Dessert Tea Party where many of our students talked about why they enjoy coming to LIST and how it has helped them. In connection with this, we had our first Chef’s School where many of our students participated in the making of some of the desserts served at the Tea Party. We also continued our art classes, but we extended them to include other topics (a great example is the Chef’s School). One memorable Saturday class was a science class where we made two paper airplanes exactly the same except for the material they were made with. One was made of regular printer paper and the other was made of card stock. The test was then to see which one flew the farthest. The card stock airplane flew further, but when we started adding tape and paper clips, the card stock airplane became too heavy.
Anyway, it has been a fantastic year and while I am looking forward to a break, I am also excited for our summer program to begin at the end of July where we will spend time doing more science experiments and some review as well.

What a Day!

It was a great day at LIST last Saturday! First, we started the day off with our first Chef’s School. Seven students came and participated in making three different desserts. We first started off by making chocolate covered pretzels. The students had a choice of dipping sauces, white chocolate, chocolate and even caramel. Once they dipped their pretzels, they then had the option to add sprinkles as well.
For the next part of the Chef’s School, the students broke into two groups according to what they wanted to make. The first group made Caramel Cracker Chocolate Bars where they made their own caramel from scratch. The second group made Popcorn Mountains using popcorn, marshmellows, peanuts and M&M’s. These students in particular had a great time as the marchmellows had melted sitting in the sun, so their hands got especially dirty getting those out of the bags. Then while making the mountains, their hands got sticky once again!
Later in the afternoon, we had our Delicious Desserts Tear Party. We had so many wonderful desserts donated by so many people and we are very thankful. We also had a good turnout of donors and families from LIST coming to support us. We even had a blind tea tasting! Besides the delicious desserts and wonderful teas, the highlight occurred when five of our students spoke about why they like coming to LIST. Phrases commonly heard during these speeches were, “I like coming to LIST because I can finish my homework and then I don’t have to do it when I get home.” Or, “I like coming to LIST because it has improved my grades!”
It was a wonderful day, and I want to thank those who donated their time to help out with the Chef’s School, those who helped with the set up, and those who donated desserts. Of course, we also want to thank everyone who was able to attend. If you were not able to attend, we have some great pictures of the two events. Click here to see the Chef’s School, and click here to see the Tea Party!