Month: September 2017

Arts Program Updates

National Arts in Education Week was the second week in September so we thought we’d do an update of what’s new this year and in store for our Arts Career Path Program.

Remember that cool Duck Truck dance residency we did last year through a partnership through Heidi Duckler Dance Theatre?  Well it was such a success that we decided to build an after school program with them.  We now offer an after school dance class that students take three times a week for a long block class.  They are earning class credit just as if they were taking a class during regular school hours and it can count as their VPA or PE required credits.  It’s going great so far.  Our students have already gone on a field trip to see a performance by Heidi Duckler Dance Theatre at Culver City Hall which was part of Culver City’s Centennial celebration.

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Welcome Onward Scholars Program

St. Mary’s Academy is excited to announce that, through the generosity of The John H. and Cynthia Lee Smet Foundation, 12 Belles from the Class of 2022 will make up Cohort I of Onward Scholars at SMA! 

The mission of the Onward Scholars Program is to promote academic excellence, foster an environment conducive to genuine peer support, expose students to leadership opportunities that instill a love of service, and empower goal-driven young women by providing resources that build skills for their path to higher education and lives of purpose.

Belles accepted into the program will receive a four-year scholarship to fund 75% of their tuition. Scholars will meet with the Program Director, Mrs. Rice, on a regular basis to receive support pursuing academic and personal goals through mentoring, access to college workshops, life skills education, and community service opportunities. 
In addition to the scholarship, each Scholar has access to a maximum of a $2,000 stipend over the four years from the Smet Foundation that the Program Director administers to offset the cost of activities or programs in line with the mission of Onward Scholars (e.g., summer college programs, test prep). 

To qualify to be an Onward Scholar, an applicant must be among the top students in her graduating class (with the target minimum cumulative GPA being a 3.5 during her middle school tenure) and have demonstrated leadership in her school and/or community.

To learn more about the Onward Scholars program at SMA, please go to admissions section of www.smabelles.org/ 
or contact:

Mrs. Michele Rice, Program Director

Onward Scholars at St. Mary’s Academy

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Busy Belles Summer 2017

As always our Belles were busy, busy, busy this past summer .  Check out some of the exciting and enriching things they were up to:

Jailen Hewitt, Gold Tie ’18

Jailen volunteers with Kaiser Permanente West LA every Saturday working in the Family Child Center. She did some volunteer work at the Junior Blind Center doing data entry.  She also volunteered at the St. Joseph’s Center in Venice as a social work intern helping feed the needy and also helping out in child care.  She went on 2 college tours, EST BLACK COLLEGE TOUR, where she visited Bennett, Clark Atlanta, Howard, Spelman, Norfolk, Hampton & North Carolina AT&T, and also visited a few landmarks.  Her second college tour was in northern California with the UCLA Richard Riordan Business Program to UC Berkeley and Stanford  were she also got to tour Google & Survey Monkey.  Wow, what a jam packed summer!

Jessica Laar, Gold Tie ’18

Jessica worked a six week paid internship at Kaiser Permanente  in West Los Angeles, CA. The program is called Kaiser Permanente L.A.U.N.C.H. High School Summer Youth Employment Program.  L.A.U.N.C.H. is short for for Learn About Unlimited New Careers in Healthcare.

Jessica also participated in the C.S.J. Leadership Conference at Mt. St. Mary’s University, Doheny Campus in Los Angeles, CA in June.

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Belles and Books

On Wednesday, August 30th, we welcomed a group of alumnae back to St. Mary’s Academy for our fourth annual Belles and Books event! We tasked both students and alumnae to complete the same summer reading: Outliers: The Story of Success by Malcolm Gladwell. In his book, Gladwell attempts to reveal the many factors at work that contribute to a person’s success and analyze patterns using examples from various fields, such as professional sports, tech, and music. These people who achieve extraordinary things he calls outliers.

Alumnae circulated through our English classes throughout the day and held lively discussions not only about the book and the author, but also about how they define success, what you can take away from well-known success stories, and whether they believe themselves to be outliers. This gave students an additional chance to hear and explore new perspectives on the book—and to get to spend some quality time getting to know our fantastic alums! Thank you so much to the alumnae who shared their time and their thoughts (as well as life anecdotes and advice!) with our Belles! 

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SMART Camp

Over the summer, St. Mary’s Academy hosted two sessions of enrichment camps for middle school students we dubbed SMART Camp.  These two-week sessions were comprised of morning and afternoon workshops that incorporated science, math, art and engineering/ technology also known in the education world as STEAM.

The morning portion of the first session of SMART Camp focused on Recycled Science and utilized recycled materials from  Trash for Teaching.  Our students learned about various types of energy sources and the importance of finding renewable alternatives to fossil fuels. Students used iPads to do research on energy sources, created comic strips about their selected topics, and built functioning windmills that could raise an object.

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