Q: Has your teaching style changed since you began teaching in an academy?Cheryl Gonder
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Cheryl Gonder: It has helped me to work on more interdisciplinary projects with my colleagues and to have a career focus as a part of my daily lessons. Now, I have to add financial knowledge and make connections between what my students read, study and write about to real world applications.
Q: What does being a part of a small learning community mean for your students?
Scott Andereck: I clearly see the benefits of personalizing the atmosphere. There's a family atmosphere here. The students are held accountable by me and having somebody always aware of what they're doing helps them stay on task.
Scott Andereck  | Cheryl Gonder: It lets them see that what they learn in school can be applied to a career. In terms of the SLC, it feels like a home away from home. They form stronger bonds with their peers and teachers and have commented that they feel they can talk to their teachers about things because they've known them over a period of time.
Sam Dovlatian: The atmosphere that is created by the academy allows students to feel they are a part of something. This is what's lacking in most educational institutions. Most students don't feel like they belong because it's so big, so impersonal. In an SLC, students feel respected, know that someone cares, and that they are valued.
Liz Sawyer-Cunningham: For the student, it means that all of their teachers get to know them.Liz Sawyer-Cunningham  | As a lead, it's my job to know that they're doing the best they can in all of their classes because we all work together to get them ready for a career path. Students might not like it but at the same time they benefit from it.
Q: How do you connect real world learning for your students?Sam Dovlatian  | Sam Dovlatian: All the connections LAEP offers with business partners, a finance course at USC for which we have 100 percent participation, and conducting mock interviews and job skills workshops are important. The knowledge and understanding of the career they want to go into before they go to college is a big advantage.
Scott Andereck: Our juniors and seniors punch in their time, write checks, and practice personal finance. The seniors run the show! They create projects, organize the yearly AoF banquet, keep track of funds and are basically in charge of the academy of finance.
Liz Sawyer-Cunningham: We're building partnerships with KPMG and Pricewaterhouse Coopers, going on job shadows and finding internships. It's good for the students to get a flavor of what it feels like to work in a business, so we require them to dress professionally one day a week.
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Leanndra Martinez is the Career Academies intern for college programming at LAEP. She has a degree in English and Global
Studies from UC Santa Barbara.
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