Every holiday season Guadalupe School is the recipient of multiple acts of service, organized and executed by wonderful members of our Salt Lake community. This year has been no exception - book and school supplies donations have poured in, our youth and adult tutors have continued their invaluable volunteering even during this busy time of year, and several organizations have organized to collect needed items and bring them to the school (read about Discover Card's awesome Thanksgiving-time service). Most recently Guadalupe School's Early Learning and Charter students have enjoyed some charitable gifts in the form of warm, fuzzy hats and brand new pairs of shoes! 

The American Heart Association generously chose Guadalupe School as one of the recipients of its campaign to distribute knitted hats - a huge contribution to Guadalupe families, as the weather gets colder, and some families struggle to afford all of the new, warm clothing necessary for their children. The American Heart Association stated, "[We are] thrilled to contribute hats to the Guadalupe school as part of [our] “Little Hats, Big Hearts” campaign.  These hats have been hand knitted with love and kindness from many volunteers throughout the state of the Utah to help raise awareness of heart disease in children.  They are all red in color to represent love and serve as a reminder of heart health.  It is never too early to be Heart Healthy.  What better way to share love and kindness than to provide Little Hats for Little Kiddos so that they can feel warm and loved as they play outside being active and healthy."

In order to help warm Guadalupe kids all the way from their heads to their toes, Utah First Credit Union followed with a gigantic donation of brand new pairs of shoes for each and every one of our 300 K-6 Charter School students. This amazing service is a multi-year tradition, that always gets students beyond excited in anticipation. Utah First distributes the shoes in an especially fun way, by gift wrapping each shoe box individually in holiday paper, so that students can receive their gifts and open them together! We are so grateful for Utah First Credit Union's ongoing partnership and support of our organization. They have become an impactful part of the holiday season here at Guadalupe. 

We are so grateful for the generosity shown during the holiday season, and all year round! Guadalupe School families and individuals benefit greatly from the charity of their fellow community members, and are so appreciative. Click the following links if you would like to support, through a monetary donation, in-kind donation, or volunteerism. Thank you! 

For more than a decade, Guadalupe School has been privileged to share a highly supportive partnership with Ace Recycling and Disposal. The company is one of the biggest independent haulers in the Western United States, employs 200+ individuals, and runs approximately 100 trucks each day. They are also deeply committed to effective recycling practices and investing in a greener future for America. 

Over the years, Ace Disposal has been exemplary in its multifaceted support of Guadalupe School. The company has long picked up Guadalupe’s recycling and trash at no charge, offsetting a significant expense for the School and allowing more funds to go straight to our academic programs. Ace has been a sponsor at numerous Guadalupe  fundraising events. We love it when Ace folks are at our events! Most recently, Ace met with our Adult Education and Executive Directors to set up a system of making Guadalupe parents and adult education students aware of current job openings at Ace, which offers its employees great careers.  

When asked about Ace's support of Guadalupe, Matt Stalsberg, owner and general manager, said, "We at Ace Disposal tremendously value our relationship with the Guadalupe School. Over the years we have seen a tremendous impact on the community. The model that Guadalupe has is so phenomenal, we can tell that the staff cares greatly for people.  It is a privilege to do whatever we can to help and Ace truly enjoys it. Seeing how Guadalupe helps people is a real inspiration."

Guadalupe students are looking forward to a Spring 2019 field trip to Ace Disposal where they will learn about the use of renewable energy in a large scale industrial operation, how recycling works, and how big those trucks really are! We greatly appreciate our generous and involved partner, Ace Disposal, and thank them for the company’s longstanding commitment to Guadalupe School and its families. 

Guadalupe School was honored to receive Governor Gary Herbert for a festive visit celebrating the harvest season. He was accompanied by Commissioner of Agriculture LuAnn Adams and local farmers Jordan Riley and Luke Petersen. The group spent time with a third grade class, chatting about Thanksgiving dinner food, where Utah's produce comes from, and the importance of agriculture.​

For the third year in a row, Discover Card Processing provided a huge service to Guadalupe families from each of our academic programs. The company put together full turkey dinners, that come in insulated food bags, for families identified by our program directors as needing a little extra help during the holiday season. This year, Discover Card provided 35 families with the meals, for which the families were extremely grateful. While they waited for families to arrive and pick up their turkey dinners, the volunteers enjoyed a turkey lunch providing by Guadalupe School's cafeteria! 

As if the Thanksgiving meals weren't already more than enough, Discover Card employees decided to go above and beyond, by also helping the Charter School and the development team with two other service projects. Four employees split up to visit each and every Charter classroom to measure shoe sizes, in preparation for the Warm the Soles shoe distribution that will occur in December. Meanwhile, the remaining six employees helped the development team to stuff over 1,000 envelopes to be sent out for our organization's annual appeal campaign. ​

Discover Card has become a wonderful partner to Guadalupe School over the years. We are so grateful for their support of our mission and help to our families. Many individuals will have an even better Thanksgiving holiday thanks to this generous corporate partner. 

If you would like to send a volunteer group, sponsor an event, or donate to support our cause, please reach out to the development team at 801-531-6100 ext. 308. Thank you! 

In between the traditional spelling quizzes, essay writing, and times table practices, Guadalupe School students get to learn through equally important, hands-on, visual experiences. This last month was no exception, with various grades learning from classroom outreaches carried out by the local aquarium and Hogle Zoo, as well as through a field trip to the courthouse! 

Grade schoolers had their curiosity peaked, but their comfort limits tested when a team from the aquarium brought by some creepy, crawly visitors to help teach about various environments around the world. The creatures included a boa constrictor, lizards, and a couple of giant cockroaches. The students had the option of petting each animal to see what their skin feels like, and learned all about their home environments and how they live. 

​Students also got to touch and feel in order to learn during the Hogle Zoo classroom outreach. Instructors let the children go through boxes of parts of different environments, that included various soils, plants, animal pelts, footprints, and more. The students were fascinated as they learned about what types of animals and vegetation thrive in different climates and geographical areas. 

Older students had the opportunity to visit Matheson Courthouse downtown Salt Lake City. They not only toured the beautiful building, but got to sit in the jury seats and listen to a real judge talk about conducting trials. They also entered and sat in the Supreme Court, where they learned about how a panel of the highest judges in the state decide cases together. The kids loved the experience, and one girl even expressed how she wants to become a lawyer! 

​We can never thank our community partners enough. They help Guadalupe School to transform lives through education by ensuring our students enhanced learning experiences, and exposing them to the surrounding world. Thank you! 

Last week Guadalupe School had some special visitors with a mission to give back to the community through service! Both Salesforce and Junior Achievement sent groups of volunteers to be put to work helping out at the school. 

Salesforce is a consistent volunteer partner of Guadalupe School's, and has helped on a variety of projects including math tutoring and collecting school supplies. This time, the team took a new approach by funding and executing a playground project that made preschool teachers very happy. They replaced the dirt under the preschool swing set with wood chips, in order to make sure children do not encounter muddy puddles under the swings each time it rains. The Salesforce team did not hesitate to put on their gloves, and pick up a shovel or push a wheelbarrow! We are so grateful for their hard work and contribution. 

​Junior Achievement got in on the fun by sending accountants from all around the Salt Lake area to teach kid-friendly finance and business classes for the annual "JA in a Day" event. Charter School students all the way from kindergarten to sixth grade enjoyed learning new things like how to apply mathematics in practical situations, saving money, making profit, and learning what a supply chain is! It was fun for them to learn these concepts directly from community members who apply them in their real jobs. 

​Guadalupe School loves welcoming volunteer teams, and we are very thankful for the contributions of our community partners. Whether you are an individual, family, community group, or team of employees, don't hesitate to find out how you can get involved at Guadalupe School! Email Cassie at cassie.bingham@guadschool.org to learn more, or visit our volunteer page. Thank you! 

   At Guadalupe School, we pride ourselves on facilitating opportunities for our students, young and old, to learn from community partners, and gain value and insight from exposure to the surrounding culture and industries of the Salt Lake area. Recently, Charter School students embarked on several fun, educational field trips that added real-world application to some of their classroom studies. Third graders learned from the expert architects and engineers at Fetzer Woodworking, fifth grade took a tour of the Utah Museum of Fine Arts, and sixth grade visited the studios of Telemundo Utah.

The Charter School's oldest students loved their visit to Fetzer Woodworking, Guadalupe's second time visiting in the last two years. They learned one way that math becomes highly applicable to real life, as Fetzer's engineers and woodworking professionals explained the processes of using measurements to produce perfectly accurate wood products, and how robotic machines help in the production lines! The kids enjoyed learning about the behind-the-scenes work necessary to make things like tables, doors, and even the iconic organ in Salt Lake's LDS Conference Center. 

Another prominent partner of Guadalupe School, the University of Utah, took 5th graders and our amazing art instructor, Tracy Strauss, through the Museum of Fine Arts. Students were inspired as they observed creative works and learned about the artists who produced them. Guadalupe School encourages learning from all the fields of education - whether they be STEM studies, literature, or visual art! 

Guadalupe students are so fortunate to have opportunities to learn from amazing school teachers in the classroom, but also from community teachers willing to share what they do for the world and how they do it. Thank you to all of our partners who provide wonderful learning experiences for our students. 

P.S. If you have a great field trip or assembly idea for Guadalupe School, drop us a line! Email cassie.bingham@guadschool.org to get in touch. 

For years, Guadalupe School has not only provided transformative academic programs that educate and prepare children and adults for higher education and careers, but has also collaborated with invaluable community partners to offer families services that would otherwise be too expensive for many. 

Throughout the school year, our campus is visited by various mobile clinics. Last year alone, families enjoyed visits from 6 medical clinics, 6 vision clinics, a dental clinic and a flu shot clinic. All 300 charter school students were vision screened, and 90 received new glasses. Similarly, all Adult Education students were screened, and 91 received new glasses. The mobile medical and dental clinics provided routine checkups for free, and offered recommendations for any advanced services needed. 

Guadalupe School is very grateful for the assistance offered by the Salt Lake community. Our families are better able to take advantage of their education, to focus, and too succeed when they are in optimal health! ​

For the second year in a row, Guadalupe School held a September benefit breakfast called "Pancakes with a Purpose" at the Fall Events Center. The development team and board of directors at Guadalupe enjoy the opportunity to plan and provide events that community members can attend where they will learn more about the programs, services, and mission of our organization. 

This year, guests were especially privileged to hear from Luis Garza as the keynote speaker. Luis is the executive director of Comunidades Unidas, a community partner of Guadalupe School that advocates for the mission of "empowering the Latino community in Utah to recognize and achieve their own potential and become a positive force for change in the larger community" and its goal of "healthy and united families." Luis spoke about the work of Guadalupe School, Comunidades Unidas, and similar organizations in helping the citizens of Utah to stand strong in their support of the immigrant community, by learning about people from different backgrounds, empathizing with them, and helping them gain access to necessary resources like quality education. 

In total, the sponsors and attendees were able to contribute $25,000 to go towards Guadalupe School's programs. We are so grateful for the generosity of our donors, and can guarantee that this financial support will be used in ways that transform the lives of individual students and families at Guadalupe. If you couldn't make it to the breakfast, but would still like to donate, please visit our give page. In addition, keep your eye out for upcoming Guadalupe School fundraising events, such as our annual "Love Guadalupe Movie Night" that will take place on February 12, 2019. ​

   What is the “summer slide?” Summer slide is the tendency of students to lose some of the achievements they have gained during the school year over the summer break. Studies have shown that children do worse on standardized tests taken at the end of summer than they did on the exact tests taken the beginning of summer. On average, children lose two months of reading skills over the summer. Kids lose 2.6 months of math skills, and one to two months of total learning is lost over the summer break. It takes six weeks of a new school year for children to regain what they lost over the summer. By the end of sixth grade, students who have experienced summer slide over the years are about two years behind their peers academically.
​   The good news is that summer slide can be reduced or reversed completely. What can be done to prevent summer slide? Parental involvement is vital. Children whose parents read with them every day are less likely to experience summer slide. Try to incorporate reading into your routine. Read with your child right after breakfast, or have a bedtime story each night. 

Ways to make reading more appealing:

Maybe you have a child who dislikes or struggles with reading. Here are some tips to encourage reading:

• Make sure the books your child reads are at their reading level. While it is important for children to push themselves to learn new words, you don’t want them to feel frustrated if the reading is too difficult.
• Read books to your child in a funny voice, or have different voices for the characters to make it more interesting and enjoyable for your child.
• Read books with your child. Take turns with your child reading every other page.
• Praise your child after each page or two. Say things like, “Wow, you sounded out a really hard work!” “I’m so impressed!” Or “Great reading!”
• Reading the same book over and over can seem monotonous, but hearing the same story can aid in reading, so it’s great if your child asks for the same book each day. 

 
 Another way to combat the summer slide is to enroll children in summer school or summer reading programs. Summer reading programs have been shown to raise children’s test scores. Summer school programs have been shown to reduce the summer slide, however, these programs are most effective when children attend regularly, so make sure your child attends every day. 

Physical Fitness
Summer is also a time when children could lose levels of physical fitness. Why is physical fitness important? It matters because physical health is known to increase academic performance. In fact, regular exercise can improve concentration and increase math and test scores. 
Here are some ideas to incorporate physical fitness into your summer: Start early. Summer is hot! Try to get outside early in the morning when it’s cooler. There are many inexpensive ways to exercise. Some ideas are, go to the park. Playground equipment is fun and active. Play a sport with your child, like soccer or basketball. Go for a walk or bike ride. Exercise can be done in the home. Create a circuit routine for your child such as having your child do 15 jumping jacks, 20 sit-ups, run in place for 30 seconds, etc. Make exercise fun by asking your child to imitate animals, i.e. hop like a frog, run like a cheetah, flap their “wings” like a bird.

Sources: www.brookings.edu http://www.ascd.org http://www.pbs.org https://medium.com 
https://www.cde.state.co.us/cdelib/summerslide