STUDENTS & STAFF CONNECTING THROUGH BOOKS! |
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The Lake Forest High School Foundation’s annually held “Grant Day” brings a lot of excitement and energy into the building as teachers and staff find out if their grant request for the upcoming school year has been approved. This year, Grant Day was especially exciting for Kristen Carlson, the Instructional Director of the English Department, and Katie Pausch, LFHS’ Head Librarian, as it was when they learned that the foundation renewed their 2020 request for LFHS Reads, which had to be postponed last year due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Now Carlson and Pausch are looking forward to kicking-off the new shared reading experience this summer.
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“The goal of LFHS Reads is to celebrate reading and to provide our school community opportunities to connect through books,” said Carlson.
Twenty LFHS staff members from across departments have volunteered to be a part of the LFHS Reads program and sponsored a book. While it is entirely voluntary, students are encouraged to check out the list of teachers participating and the books they've selected this month. If they choose to participate, they will be given their selected book in May to read over the summer. In September, staff members will be facilitating the book discussion groups with the students.
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Pausch curated the diverse book list, which includes a few titles she is particularly excited about --Scythe by Neal Shusterman, Anxious People by Fredrik Backman and American Wolf by Nate Blakeslee. The foundation’s grant is being used to purchase all of the books so that every student has the opportunity to participate.
In addition to supporting a love of reading, LFHS Reads has the potential to meaningfully connect groups of students and staff that may not, on the surface, have much in common. Carlson, who sponsored the book Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens, said that she and Pausch are anticipating that 300 students will participate this summer, and that they would like to see LFHS Reads become an annual tradition for the school community.
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“I hope that LFHS Reads will be an experience that can draw our school community together after a very difficult year,” said Pausch. “It offers the students and staff a chance to read and talk about books for the pure enjoyment of it.” |
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English Grants Engage & Challenge Students |
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In addition to supporting the LFHS Reads program, other recent foundation grants have been used to enhance the English Department’s journalism program and to bring interactive technology into English classes. |
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“As a whole, the English Department is always looking for ways to engage students and deepen their understanding of the literature. The foundation’s support helps us do that. Through the grants we can find new ways to challenge the students and to better their learning experiences.”
~ Kristen Carlson
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Forest Scout Awarded a 2019 Grant |
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LFHS' Robust Journalism Program |
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At LFHS, students are able to start taking journalism classes as English electives their junior year. Each semester about 40 students are enrolled in Writing for Journalism & Media Communications 1 and 2. Carlson said that over the seven years that she has worked at the high school, she has watched the journalism program grow and become more visible in the school and the community.
The journalism curriculum includes writing, editing and production of the school’s newspaper, The Forest Scout. The foundation’s consistent support of the journalism program has enabled LFHS students to have access to high-quality equipment, such as digital cameras and high-resolution monitors, which allows for real world experiences capturing, reporting, laying out and editing, and sharing news and events within the school and throughout the community.
Foundation funding has also supported printing of the newspaper (pre pandemic) and moving The Forest Scout to its current online webpage format, which is updated daily to bring a unique student voice to the high school community.
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“The foundation grants have helped give credibility to the program, made it more robust and attractive to students and elevated the quality of the work that the students are doing. The students love the classes. Some take the classes to explore different topics of interest while others may want to pursue journalism in college.”
~ Kristen Carlson
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Technology Brings Interactive Learning Experiences to LFHS English Classes |
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Journalism students are not the only ones benefitting from foundation-supported technology upgrades in the English Department. In 2017, a foundation grant was used to pilot the wePresent platform, which is a professional wireless presentation system that allows users to collaborate and give interactive presentations from their computers or tablets. The platform gives students the opportunity to drive the learning experience, as they can project their work and more easily share it in small groups or with the entire class.
English Teacher Amy Zimmermann said that she still regularly uses the wePresent wireless document cameras and projector several times a week (in normal years) and plans to continue to use them next school year to share students’ work.
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“With the wireless document camera, I can move it around the room to various students' desks; they can place their paper with annotations or an example sentence, or whatever we are working on, to share and learn from each other.”
~ Amy Zimmermann,
LFHS English Teacher
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Since 2002, the LFHS Foundation has awarded 22 grants to the English Department, totaling more than $96,000. |
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for investing in educational excellence with us!
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