News from ALearn - March 2013

Catalyst to College Newsletter

April 2013

ALearn TA Shares Experience

ALearn gets ready for Summer!

ALearn is thrilled with the response it has received from its call to recruit capable, energetic, and committed college student Teaching Assistants for its 2013 summer programs.

Please direct any interested college students to the following link:

ALearn TA Application

Math Plus

Program Update

7th Graders Embrace

MAP Plus Class

200 7th grade students are attending ALearn's Map Plus program in the Alum Rock and Franklin-McKinley School Districts. Math Accel-eration Program (MAP Plus), the 12-week supplemental math course is offered either before or after school at Sylvandale,Shirakawa, College Connection Academy, Ocala and Fischer Middle Schools.

News from Alearn's

2012 Summer Associate

Jonathan Ho

In the August 2012 newsletter, we introduced you to Jonathan Ho, our summer assessment associate. Jonathan is a graduate of the Franklin-McKinley School District, and the first generation of his family to attend College. He is finishing up his senior year at the University of Pennsylvania, he took a few minutes to provide an update...

Dear ALearn Friends and Supporters,

The focus at ALearn this year is building a sustainable organization, through people, programs and expanded infrastructure. On the people side, we have added to our Board through our appointments of John Porter and Nancy Bush (see story). We have a wonderful veteran staff, VP of Development, Carol Flaherty, VP of Programs, Vickie Scott Grove, Program Director, Carlos Jimenez and Office Manager, Karin Dutra.

We have added an Encore Fellow, Donna Wilson, to help us in marketing, and two high level HR managers have been volunteering to help us with policy guidelines and staff recruitment.

In the program area, we are moving forward dynamically in the following ways:

Working more deeply with the districts we serve, and becoming real partners with them;
Serving students over multiple years from 6th through 9th grades, and adding before and after school programs to sustain the students' learning momentum;
Adjusting our programs to include curricula using the Common Core Standards;
Adding Geometry to our pre-Algebra and Algebra curricula ; and
Building and enhancing our college readiness focus.

Equally important, we have kicked off our Annual Giving Program with a very generous donation of $50,000 from Ed and Pamela Taft. The Tafts have also kindly moved us a giant step forward by pledging to support us for at least five years, thus providing our first multi-year pledge. Such help will be invaluable in building ALearn into a sustainable organization.

As we grow in 2013, we have been lucky to retain many leading donors such as the

Silicon Valley Community Foundation,

Safeway, Applied Materials, the Reddere Foundation, the Shortino Foundation, Wells Fargo, Westly Foundation, Cisco, the Los Altos Community Foundation, the Harrington Family Foundation and the Leslie Family Foundation. In addition, we have added a number of new donors:

Heffernan Insurance, KLA Tencor, Jan and Myron Scholes, Julie Brooks, and Nancy Bush.

Thanks to all of you for your guidance and support, and for helping us build something meant to last-for our students, teachers and teaching assistants and their communities.

Warmest Regards,

Kathryn S. Hanson

Founder and CEO

ALearn

khanson@ALearn.org