2020 Roots and Wings Magazine

Roots Wings

AND

Stronger Together

’20 ECHO HORIZON SCHOOL

3

4

LETTER FROM PEGGY PROCTER

T H A N K YO U, P A M E L A K E L LY

12

14

C O N G R AT U L AT I O N S TO THE CLASSES OF 2010 AND 2014!

LEARNING IN THE TIME OF C O R O N AV I R U S

30

ALUMNI HIGHLIGHTS

RUBY LANET

18

THE ECHO CENTER TURNS 50

PURPOSE LEARNING

D I WA L I

ALUMNI SPOTLIGHT

C O N G R AT U L AT I O N S TO THE CLASS OF 2020!

HAPPENINGS

24

22

28

10

6

34

2019–2020

REPORT ON PHILANTHROPY

32

BOOKS WE RECOMMEND

36

YO U R S U P P O R T

26

SINGAPORE M AT H

33

BOOKS OUR STUDENTS RECOMMEND

38

T R U S T E E S , PA , COMMITTEE CHAIRS

Dear Echo Horizon community, What a pleasure it is to share with you the 2020 edition of the Echo Horizon magazine, Roots and Wings: Stronger Together. It is exceptional and unique, just like the moment we are all living in. Inside you’ll find stories filled with joy, challenges, successes, and missteps—all things that we embrace in our community.

As many of you know, I enjoy expressing myself in writing, and value the opportunity to share my thoughts with our Echo Horizon family. Sadly, last spring, I wrote two of the most important letters I’ve ever written to a community: first, a letter announcing the closure of our beloved campus due to an unknown and dangerous novel virus; and second, a letter about our Echo Horizon values in the face of the rampant and systemic racial violence, injustice, and brutality that is devastating our nation and taking the lives and freedom of African Americans.

Our faculty, staff, families, and students faced both of these challenges with strength, resilience, and resolve. We transitioned to an online platform for teaching and learning and maintained our commitment to excellence and to strong relationships and connection despite distance. We recreated school projects and traditions with creativity and heart through car parades, Zoom community sings, Bingo nights, and baking challenges, and even hosted a phenomenal Wishes and Wings ceremony and virtual graduation for the Class of 2020. We missed the hugs and high fives in the hallways, but we kept the joy and love alive!

The challenge of online schooling pales in comparison to the evil that is racism. Our Echo Horizon community is a multicultural, multiracial one, founded on inclusion and made truly exceptional by our diversity. We know that diversity is excellence and that children learn and thrive in communities that are a mosaic of beautiful colors, abilities, ethnicities, languages, ideas, and beliefs. We believe and value this diversity and nothing will get in the way of our commitment to it. We grieved and struggled with our own emotions and with the weight of how to share honestly with children the reality of racism and oppression in our nation. At Echo Horizon, we do not shy away from these conversations and lessons. We are committed to a curriculum that teaches an appreciation of diversity, has a commitment to equity, and shares a lived experience of inclusion. As a school, we believe that it is our moral obligation to address history past and present in developmentally appropriate ways. Not doing so would be an injustice and would condone a cycle we must not perpetuate. We ask you to join us as we stand together to combat systemic racism now and always.

Echo Horizon remains a role model for what it means to be as a loving, inclusive community and a vibrant and innovative educational institution. The challenges we face may feel ominous, but together we rise above, in the name of our children. We welcome the opportunity to reconnect and engage with you, our beloved alumni, as we continue the journey of giving children roots to grow and wings to fly.

With love and gratitude,

40

2019–2020

FINANCIAL REPORT

42

2019–2020

ANNUAL GIVING

45

A D M I N I S T R AT I O N

46

ECHO HORIZON AT A G L A N C E

Peggy Procter Head of School

Mission Statement

3

The mission of Echo Horizon School and its Echo Center is to educate children in a collaborative environment that is academically challenging and developmentally appropriate. We actively promote mutual respect, individual responsibility, and ethical action. The Echo Horizon graduate is an inquisitive and critical thinker who brings creativity, kindness, and self-reliance to the lifelong journey of learning.

Thank you, “ W I T H O U T A D O U B T, O N E O F T H E HIGHLIGHTS OF BEING HEAD OF S C H O O L AT E C H O H O R I Z O N H A S Rebecca Kelly with former Head of School Paula Dashiell

BEEN THE OPPORTUNITY TO LEARN F R O M A N D C O L L A B O R AT E W I T H T H E

Pamela Kelly and family

4

Pamela Kelly

How can we ever thank Pamela Kelly for her long commitment to Echo Horizon? After five years as Chair of the Board of Trustees, Pamela is stepping down as her term comes to an end. Akeem Ayeni will take on the role of Board Chair. Pamela will remain an active member of the Board, especially with the Echo Center Committee.

We are grateful to have her continued guidance as we look ahead.

Pamela Kelly’s deep relationship with Echo Horizon began in 1996 when her oldest daughter Rebecca started Kindergarten. “We visited all these other Westside schools. . . . My husband and I had gone to public schools on the East coast. And we really did not like the L.A. independent school scene—the pressure to tour while you were still pregnant, all of that. Echo had a strong academic reputation, but so did other schools. Yet Echo Horizon felt so different. It was down-to-earth.

“We both worked for large, high-powered organizations. Everyone at my firm was going to John Thomas Dye or Curtis or Carlthorp, these big, buzzy “name” schools. We had every outside attribute that looked like that’s where we should be taking Rebecca. But those schools didn’t feel right to us. We didn’t mind being in a super-competitive setting as adults, but we didn’t want that for our five-year-old. We wanted our daughter to find herself. Echo was about letting the kids be who they were and meeting them there. I have four kids and they were all different kinds of learners. I trusted Echo to do right by my children.” All four of Pamela’s children went to Echo Horizon—Rebecca graduated in 2003, Elizabeth in 2005, Sam in 2010, and Jake in 2014. They all matriculated to Harvard-Westlake.

“In my first years with Echo, I was working 60-hour weeks and I was also pregnant, so I wasn’t on campus much,” Pamela recalls.

“I hosted the fall class parties and the graduations for my kids’

classes. I was the chair for the Teacher Appreciation Committee and one of the best things I did as a parent was to join the Cookbook Committee!

“We created a cookbook for busy parents with recipes that kids will like. I still use that all the time. In 2000, I was working long hours and teaching at UCLA Law School, yet I somehow decided that was the right time to become a room parent! I joined the Board in 2007. Really, I had wanted to join the Board for a long time—I was a professional, the only time I had was in the evening, and I had a real commitment to the mission of the school.”

“Pamela has been the bedrock of the Board. Her clear and organized mind has been invaluable—she’s kept us thinking two steps ahead,” says Board Vice President Ken Nakayama. “Her work ethic is tremendous. We’re also deeply appreciative of the sacrifices of her family—thank you, Peter and family, for ‘loaning’ Pamela to us for so many years!”

So far, Pamela’s time on the Board has been bookended by the 2008–2009 financial crisis and the global pandemic of 2020. “I’ve worked to create a lot of transparency with families so that they know how the Board gets elected and what we do,” explains Pamela.

“My work is in corporate finance and I think one of my greatest accomplishments was bringing our corporate governance on a par with the level of excellence of our school. In 2014, I led an effort to amend our articles and bylaws, which hadn’t been touched since 1986. I’ve worked to leave Akeem a strong system when he steps into the role of Board Chair.

“It’s hard to imagine anybody that has done more to support Echo Horizon School than Pamela,” says Akeem Ayeni. “Over the years she has served as a volunteer, a member of the Board of Trustees,

and of course the Chair of the Board of Trustees. Most impressively, she supported the community during, and long after, her four children graduated from Echo Horizon. The school has benefited tremendously from her commitment.”

“The Board is really reflective of the school,” says Pamela. “When we had a discussion about our rents with the school district, a board member got up and began reading the Points of Pride. The Board embodies the kindness we all talk about at Echo Horizon and the down-to-earth people that this school attracts.”

“One of the reasons that I chose Echo Horizon,” says Peggy Procter, “is because of Pamela and the executive committee and truly because of the dedication of the Board. This Board is so high functioning, committed, and well-run. But they’re also a group of caring people who question things.”

“I’ve worked with three heads of school and I think the Board’s biggest accomplishment was hiring Peggy and supporting her,” says Pamela. “She’s a dynamic, caring, talented Head who will shepherd Echo Horizon in the coming years.”

Pamela’s commitment to Echo Horizon has enriched the culture, connectedness, and inner workings of the school. She always considers the broad range of needs that our commitment to diversity represents. Pamela notes, “The school didn’t say, ‘Oh, we want to be diverse. Let’s go find diversity.’ It was already a part of the school with the Echo Center. My dad is deaf and has had a hearing aid his whole life. I wasn’t new to deafness but at first I didn’t understand how the Echo Center shaped the environment of the school.

My kids had classmates who were hard-of-hearing. From a very young age, the students understand difference in a way that’s just part of their everyday experience. My daughter Elizabeth was once asked, ‘What’s it like to have a deaf student in your class?’ She said, ‘I don’t understand the question. That’s just my friend.’ When you can create those experiences for young children, that’s just magical.

“Echo Horizon has been such an important part of my life,” Pamela adds. “ You make friends at school, you make friends at work, and you make friends at your children’s school. Our kids are still friends with their Echo Horizon friends. Rebecca is still best friends with her best friend from Kindergarten. And we’re still friends with their parents.”

For us at Echo Horizon, Pamela Kelly has been an important part of our lives and we look forward to continuing our friendship with her!

A M A Z I N G P A M E L A K E L LY. F R O M THE MOMENT I MET HER, SHE HAS B E E N A C O N S TA N T I N S P I R AT I O N TO ME AND THE ENTIRE BOARD OF TRUSTEES FOR HER TIRELESS ADVOCACY AND SUPPORT OF OUR BEAUTIFUL SCHOOL. SHE HAS SHARED SO MANY GIFTS WI TH ECHO HORI ZON—HER FOUR WONDERFUL CHILDREN, HER WISDOM, ABUNDANT TIME AND TREASURE, AND HER FEARLESS L E A D E R S H I P. A N D T O M E , A F I R S T TIME HEAD OF SCHOOL, SHE HAS G I V E N I N VA L U A B L E A D V I C E , C O U N S E L , A N D P AT I E N C E . N O O N E H A S TA U G H T M E M O R E A B O U T T H E C U LT U R E A N D B E A U T Y O F E C H O H O R I Z O N T H A N PA M E L A , A N D F O R T H AT, I A M E T E R N A L LY G R AT E F U L . ” —PEGGY PROCTER

5

HAPPENINGS

02 HAPPENINGS

10

Congratulations to the Class of

Class of 2020: our hearts are full of pride.

We look forward to hearing more about your achievements as you go forth into the world! We know that you are resilient, kind, confident, curious, questioning, active citizens, and lifelong learners. Our graduates have been accepted at the following exceptional Los Angeles-area schools:

The Archer School for Girls Brentwood School Campbell Hall Chadwick School Crossroads School for Arts & Sciences Geffen Academy Harvard-Westlake School Marlborough School Milken Community Schools Oakwood School Wildwood School Windward School

11

CONGRATULATIONS to the Classes of

12

2010

Kazuyuki Agawa

Jonathan Friedman

Jack Kessler

Carly Price

McCabe Slye

Kevin Altieri

Levi Glaser

Maya Klapper

Molly Robins

Anthony Soria

Dimitri Chavez-Pitts

Olivia Glaser

Noa Lewis

Hannah Rotchel

Eli Strauss

Soojung Choi

Erin Gruenwedel

Maud Lunenfeld

Nicole Rowey

Luke Watts-Russell

Katie Colick

Samuel Huggins

Nicolas Marks

Youngjae Ryu

Schuyler Dietz

Kimberly Halberstadter

Gabriella Mendelsohn

Isabel Saber

Abigail Ellis

Christopher Hull

Jimmy Moskowitz

Thalia Sallas-Brookwell

Benjamin Fried

Samuel Kelly

Christopher Oliver

Juliana Simon

These beloved Echo Horizon graduates didn’t get a chance to have a traditional graduation in 2020, either from high school or college.

So, we wanted to celebrate them on these pages. Go Hawks!

&

13

2014 !

Sophia Abrahamson

Talia Ginsberg

Jacob Kelly

Eli Lanet

Will Whelan

Talia Abrahamson

Joshua Hebroni

Levi Kessler

Max Lewis

Connor Woods-Tutson

Ella Rose Charles

Emily Hricak

Sonny Moskowitz

Julia Maisel-Berick

Allie Worchel

Emily DeLossa

Curtis Hung

Logan Saylor

Miranda Simon

Josh Forman

Wolfgang Hutton

Will Schulte

Sam Slye

Jeremy Fried

Silas Hunter

Oliver Shore

Noelle Trageser

Aidan Gerst

Nathan Kagan

Seth Kleinberg

Julie Wang

The class of 2010 has spread their wings and flown to colleges all over the United States. This year they celebrated their graduations. The schools they graduated from include:

This year, the class of 2014 graduated from secondary school. Our hearts and hopes are with them as they go out into the world. The schools they graduated from include:

Brown University, Carleton College, Colby College, Columbia College, Columbia University, The New School, New York University, Oberlin College, Ohio Wesleyan University, Santa Monica College, Skidmore College, Stanford University, Southern Methodist University, Tulane University, Tufts, University of California Santa Barbara, University of Colorado, University of Pennsylvania, University of Puget Sound, University of Rochester, University of Southern California, Vanderbilt University

The Archer School for Girls, Brentwood School, Campbell Hall School, Crossroads School for Arts & Sciences, Harvard-Westlake School, Marlborough School, Milken Community Schools, Oakwood School, Wildwood School, Windward School

I N T H E

Learning Rose Roman shows caterpillar chrysalides to second-grade students.

PEGGY PROCTER, HEAD OF SCHOOL: A group of us were at the NAIS

T I M E O F

Coronavirus We could little have imagined, when we began the school year in the long ago days of August 2019 that life would take such an abrupt left turn. In early 2020 we learned of a novel coronavirus in Wuhan, China. A little over two months later Echo Horizon, along with all California schools, closed its campus. We quickly moved to remote learning. How did we make the transition? How did we build an online learning system? What were its strengths and challenges?

In this interview, Peggy and other crucial members of the administration team talk about how it all went down, the challenges and successes, and what we learned.

(National Association of Independent Schools) conference in Philadelphia in late February, and they called an emergency session about the coronavirus pandemic.

That was the moment when I thought, ‘This is big.’ They said there was the possibility that this will change how we do things.

And then we all went back to our normal sessions. But we knew we had to prepare.

SAUNDRA SPARKS, CHIEF FINANCIAL OFFICER: Peggy came back from the

NAIS and talked to me. Then I went to Francisco and said, ‘We need to figure this out.’

FRANCISCO FELIX, DIRECTOR OF TECHNOLOGY: Saundra asked me to

put aside everything else I was working on and look into how to take the school online.

And that was about three weeks before we launched. Peggy had us move quickly and in a streamlined way. We focused initially on how to take the school online for a shortterm closure with just the core subjects because we didn’t know what was going to happen. My first step was to connect with peers at other schools and professional organizations. I asked who was looking into distance learning, what are the pitfalls, what are best practices. To my surprise, a bunch of people were thinking about it too. We all shared resources. International schools were hugely helpful because they were already going through it.

Alexis Okihara teaching fifth-grade Humanities.

SAUNDRA: Before the city issued the safe-

at-home order, we weren’t really getting any direction from any of our local or state leaders, so we were looking for guidance.

We constantly checked the LA Department of Public Health website and talked to our lawyers. So we proceeded based on what we felt would be the best way forward for our families and our faculty. It got better once we got the safe-at-home order. Then we knew we had to start distance learning and move people out of the building.

words of appreciation.

15

DR. RENEE LUCERO, ECHO CENTER DIRECTOR: A major challenge has been

He told me the tech side and I did the schedule. Then Francisco wrote up the Academic Continuity Plan. For about a week we intensely worked on google docs and called one another at night. We came up with the first 1.0 version that went to the Leadership Team and the faculty. Saundra thought about the financial repercussions.

What services do we need to shut down?

She and her team had to research and create a work-from-home policy, figure out payment and worker’s compensation.

We were building while she was managing operations.

finding the ideal platform for providing captions and we continue to reassess the captioning app that we use. Auditory fatigue coupled with visual fatigue is a real issue for all of us these days, but especially so for our DHH students. They were trying to learn with a degraded auditory signal while also reading captions and taking in as many visual cues as possible. It was exhausting! As a person with hearing loss, I can very much relate to this struggle and as a team and school we were wholly committed to minimizing the cognitive load for our DHH students. The tech team has been instrumental in researching options, testing, troubleshooting, and providing training to teachers and families.

FRANCISCO: In figuring out how to

PEGGY: Francisco and I wanted to be sure

make the transition to remote learning, I researched the tools we already had and realized that we had a lot of software in place like Seesaw and Google Classroom.

Teachers and students already used them.

We had to come up with a way for young students to easily access resources online without taking away a lot of the teaching time. We already used Clever, so for the little ones it was hugely helpful. We had to

that everyone had the ability to sign in on Wednesday March 18th and that we fulfilled our mission in an online platform. Anytime you build a schedule it’s a complex undertaking. Our committee usually spends three months building it. Also, our Echo Center kids needed extra time on the schedule. We went into 1.0 knowing that we needed to also make a 2.0.

PEGGY: Francisco and I did the build.

Renee Lucero is moved by students’

supplement with additional tools for asynchronous learning, like recording video or captioning lessons for our deaf and hard-ofhearing (DHH) students. Google Meets was our first platform because it was simple and provided integrated captions, but we soon transitioned to Zoom because it offered improved capabilities.

RENEE: I was acutely aware of the extra

layer of challenges that my team faced in serving deaf and hard-of-hearing students via remote learning. I had been furiously doing my best to keep up with the information churning out daily about best practices for DHH students via remote learning/ tele-therapy. One of my main concerns was making sure that the DHH teachers had the support they needed to make the change in platform. The Echo Center team has a shared google drive for resources and we meet twice a week as a team. The teachers were in direct communication with the Echo Center families and I was often on the phone with them as well, doing my best to be available during these uncertain times.

I am proud of how quickly the Echo Center team rallied together, gathering classroom hearing technology (the Roger DM system) to send home with students with less than two days notice leading up to school closures. It was important to us that our students have access to the equipment at home in order for them to be able to directly connect their personal hearing technology to their laptops and/or iPads. The Echo Horizon teachers were phenomenal in implementing accommodations for our students.

16

FRANCISCO: The first day of distance

learning was completely nerve wracking.

I was prepared for something to fall apart, but we were pleasantly surprised. All the issues were minor.

PEGGY: That first day we decided that

Sherif (Sherif Zakaria, Senior Executive Assistant) would be on phones and that me, Saundra, and Francisco would be in the building together at 8:30, ready to take on whatever came our way. There was something very symbolic in that—we were prepared to handle whatever happened together. I required all the faculty to be in the building for their first day of teaching, so that we could support them and troubleshoot any issues.

ROGER BRIDGES, ASSOCIATE HEAD OF SCHOOL FOR ADVANCEMENT, EQUITY, INCLUSION, AND COUNSELING: From my counseling background,

I can tell you that distance learning is not optimal for young children. We know we have to limit kids’ screen time, so my first concern was that we had to go in a direction that’s fraught with developmental challenges.

JENNIE WILLENS, DIRECTOR OF LOWER ELEMENTARY: What does

student life look like when you’re not in the building? So much of what we do is in the hallways, the yard . . . I think Roger and I get a lot of our data and information in the things that aren’t scheduled. I was skeptical about how well we’d be able to maintain our work because we so honor relationships.

They’re at the center of what we do.

Roger, Jalpa (Jalpa Patel, School Counselor) and I worked to ensure that the systems we had in place for students remained in place. Jalpa built new relationships with kids and families to respond to what they need. Jaqueline (Jaqueline Olivier, Learning Support Specialist) built a schedule that allowed her to continue her previous work but add a few individual students for whom this format proved to be more uprooting than we thought it would be. I was relieved that we could continue our philosophy of student support in the best possible way.

PEGGY: For elementary-school-aged

children this is not an ideal platform. We had to acknowledge that. The successes were immediate, though. We saw joy at the connections they had with their classmates and teachers. We saw the creativity and resilience of our teachers.

ROGER: Watching teachers try to meet

the needs of their students and do their own thing at home was hard. It was hard to hear that they were struggling as everyone was and still putting our kids first. Yet they rose to the challenge in terms of creativity and growth. It’s not just a cliche that struggles create opportunities.

“ I WAT C H E D A R AV E N BE BORN IN SAM P AT T E R S O N ’ S C L A S S .

JENNIFER ORDONEZ TRANSFORMED HER LIVING MUSEUM P R E S E N TAT I O N I N T O A C A R PA R A D E F O R THIRD GRADE. IN PURPOSE LEARNING W E TA L K E D T O DOCTORS AND NURSES WHO WERE ON THE FRONT LINES. WE DID ALL THE COOL S T U F F W E ’ V E A L WAY S D ONE—AND MORE. THE DYNAMI SM, CARE, AND THOUGHTFULNESS WA S A M A Z I N G . ” —PEGGY

PEGGY: The biggest evolution in distance

learning happened with our teachers in trial and error. They tried things virtually that flopped and asked why, they tried things that worked and asked why. Our teachers grew more confident, adept, and engaging through their own reflective processes. And with distance learning we had immediate parent feedback. Parents became our partners in the classroom.

Second-grade student Alex logs in for a virtual class.

JENNIE: Translating programs that involve

a lot of different people into an online format felt daunting! We had to figure out how to get the Pre-K and K students together with their fifth- and sixth-grade buddies, how to create our community partnerships with Purpose Learning, and hold our traditional all-school Community Sings. You have to maintain relationships to be a community. To see programs translate online and see that it’s about people is rejuvenating. The virtual format even breathed some new life into traditional events.

Peggy, Francisco, and Saundra celebrate a successful transition to distance learning.

RENEE: I think that the support with

ROGER: The virtual recess for kids was

parents has been a two-way street in terms of information sharing, trying things out, and scrapping things that didn’t work. I hope that the Echo Center team and families felt as supported by me as I felt by them as we navigated new territory together.

so important. Learning takes place there as well and kids are longing for that social connection. Recess became the highlight of my week. I had a big smile on my face seeing how happy it made the kids.

PEGGY: From the start we thought about

So much of what the Echo Center teachers do is support the students in the moment and that was a challenge to do on a remote platform. However, I think our DHH teachers did a beautiful job of changing the best of what they do to fit the new learning platforms. They were creative in how they check in with students via chat during class, continuing to reinforce the importance of self-advocacy skills, the daily individual check-ins with their students, continued daily listening checks every morning, and the weekly listening and spoken language intervention. I truly believe that the level of support that our DHH students received is unmatched by any other program in the surrounding area.

JENNIE: The 2.0 learning model that we

moved into after the first couple of weeks really enhanced 1.0 and incorporated a lot of feedback from the teaching team. We included all the Specialist classes and virtual recess. I saw evolution in the most spectacular way with the curriculum. Our teachers had a sense of humor and willingness to let go of perfectionism. They came up with things that were even better. And we’ll take that mindset back to school in the fall.

social-emotional learning (SEL) and student life. The amount of bingo nights, scavenger hunts, baking challenges, and car parades we planned was all geared to help students and families still experience that connection to each other and the school. While the teachers took on foundational learning, the Leadership Team and the specialists took on SEL. RENEE: We successfully continued many

of our favorite traditions, such as the Echo Center Lunch Bunch, Echo Center Spirit Day, and an All-School Echo Center Assembly in honor of Better Speech and Hearing Month.

ROGER: I’m proud of the virtual Parent Coffee we offered, it was very intimate, and people always showed up. In some ways we got to know individual families in ways that we wouldn’t have before. We checked in with every single family in our school. Out of those phone calls I got to know those families in a way that I probably wouldn’t have before. In struggle you see who people are and I’m so proud of our community from top to bottom.

17

PEGGY: One of the first things we did was

look at the sixth grade and realize that for this grade, the spring is huge. The Leadership Team began to strategize immediately with the sixth-grade parent rep group. We looked at all the events and asked, ‘Are there any that can’t happen?’ And for those that can happen, how do we transform them? We held a ditch day, a grad night, a car parade, a game night, our Wishes and Wings evening went virtual, and of course we had a virtual graduation ceremony with caps that were delivered to students’ houses. We held formal graduation pictures with one student at a time.

We looked at every part of our school life and said, ‘Can we do this remotely?’ And if the answer was even ‘Maybe,’ we tried.

We’ve got to keep offering the best learning experience that we can, and nothing will stop us. I think this experience has helped us realize how creative we are, how resilient we are, how we can learn new things, how much we love each other. While none of us would have picked this, I do believe that it will make us come back to school the better for having lived through it.

5 The Echo Center Turns

In 1970, Carol Proctor Landsberg, Kent Landsberg, and a group of parents and educators began the process of mainstreaming deaf or hard-of-hearing (DHH) children with hearing children at University Elementary School at UCLA. “At the time, gifted deaf children had only a future of unintelligible speech, of poor language and reading. They could not take their place in the hearing world, and they had a lifetime of under-employment.

That was their future,” Carol said.

Carol Proctor Landsberg and Kent Landsberg went on to found Echo Horizon School. But before the school existed, they created the Echo Center.

“The Echo Center was a sprout from Oralingua School,” recalls Carol. “I studied deaf education and trained at John Tracy Clinic. Preschool education for DHH kids was provided, and after that, students had to go into public school. In those days there was a tremendous rubella epidemic. Many children were deafened. The schools for hearing-impaired children were packed. I did my student teaching at one of the two Los Angeles-area schools and worked at one when I graduated. The parents had only those two options and there wasn’t an inclusion program for DHH children at that time.

“A group of parents went to Mrs. Tracy, who was Spencer Tracy’s widow and John’s mother. They asked for an elementary school and she helped them found it, although the parents raised the funds.

We were able to use UCLA’s resources.

The affiliation we had with UCLA led us to Madeline Hunter and to University Elementary School; their work fit our kids perfectly. We hired teachers who worked there because they already had experience with deaf and hard-of-hearing children.

“Our original location was at the Westwood Temple on Thayer and Santa Monica Blvd.,” notes Carol. “The first class was five students. It was probably the most creative time of my life and I think it was the same for the parents too.

They saw a program that was not going to put their children in a box; a program that would take care of their children socially.

The work was all-consuming and I loved it. I recruited my parents when they came to visit. They helped us fix up and decorate the school. The dads would come in and help on weekends. Our families came from all over—East LA, South LA, the Valley. We even had a room where they could stay because they had such long drives. Academically our students

Peggy Procter, Carol Landsberg, and Renee Lucero

“THE ECHO CENTER HAS B E E N O U R H O M E A WAY FROM HOME FOR THE PA S T F I V E Y E A R S . I T ’ S A WA R M , E N C O U R A G I N G PLACE AND WE FEEL did fine, but they needed support with the social part. It became clear that we needed to bring our kids into an environment in which we could present situations that allowed them to experience being competent and successful. In 1983, we established Echo Horizon School to mainstream DHH children with hearing students.

“Mainstreaming DHH children with hearing children was so important because we needed to reinforce good speech and lip reading. When all the children were hearing impaired it didn’t work that way. We wanted the DHH children to be comfortable and productive in a world that was a hearing world. Language is so difficult when your brain hasn’t experienced it in the womb.”

“I study brain science,” Carol adds. “And the social engagement system is the new piece we’re studying with the autonomic nervous system. Of course that’s where we were challenged the most—our students needed support to use their social engagement system to relate to people. If that doesn’t work, then people feel down and depressed.

I N C R E D I B LY G R AT E F U L T H AT O U R D A U G H T E R H A S ACCESS TO A MAINSTREAM P R O G R A M T H AT N O T O N LY SUPPORTS HER LISTENING AND SPOKEN LANGUAGE SKILLS, BUT GIVES HER A N E D U C AT I O N O F T H E VERY HIGHEST ORDER. OUR DAUGHTER LOVES THE SCHOOL, HER TEACHERS, A N D C L A S S M AT E S A N D W E A R E C O N F I D E N T T H AT THE LOVE OF LEARNING THE ECHO CENTER HAS PLANTED IN HER WILL O N LY C O N T I N U E T O G R O W THROUGHOUT HER LIFE.” - JOSH OPPENHEIMER, E C H O C E N T E R PA R E N T

“The building we have now became available. Parents were very excited. The building used to be a Culver City public school and Frank, one the janitors who worked here at that time stayed on. He knew all the closets and the backdoors— he knew the important things! We wanted to have around 10 percent DHH students because our experience showed us that the DHH students needed to have a DHH buddy, but if there was a larger number of DHH students they would isolate.”

“There’s something really powerful,” says Dr. Renee Lucero, Echo Center Director, “about having a buddy who knows your experience. It can be very isolating being the only kid with hearing loss, which was my experience growing up. I went to Farmdale in El Sereno and then I was mainstreamed. I feel like socially it was fine but I also didn’t know any differently.

I was a terrible advocate for myself because I didn’t want to be different or bring attention to myself.”

Today at Echo Horizon, hearing and DHH students learn and play together, developing empathy, an appreciation of difference and enhanced communication skills, such as making eye contact when speaking. General education teachers and special education teachers work together, which allows for differentiation through small-group instruction, scaffolding language, and checking for understanding.

Renee became the Echo Center Director in 2018. She earned her doctorate in special education and taught at Utah State University. Growing up in Los Angeles, Renee volunteered at John Tracy Clinic after college. She enrolled in John Tracy’s teacher-training program and taught deaf education for sixteen years. “Although I had many friends who worked at Echo Horizon, most of my experience was in the public schools.

All children deserve quality education. I was a little conflicted at first about going into the independent school world. Our Echo Center kids are privileged to be in a program that meets their needs so well, but they themselves are not a privileged group. They are with other peers like themselves and that’s so powerful. It’s such a unique model,” she says.

“OVER THE YEARS AT E C H O , I N S T E A D O F T H I N K I N G I WA S D I F F E R E N T, A N D NOT FITTING IN, I S TA R T E D T O L O O K AT MY IMPLANTS IN A D I F F E R E N T WAY. I WA S N ’ T D I F F E R E N T. I WA S N ’ T U N L U C K Y. I WA S S P E C I A L . N O W, I SEE BEING DEAF AS A PA R T O F M E , A N D I T FOREVER WILL BE A PA R T O F M E . A N D , O F COURSE, I COULDN’T H AV E D O N E

THIS

WITHOUT ECHO. ECHO HAS GIVEN ME SO MUCH THROUGHOUT SEVEN YEARS. IT HAS N O T O N LY G I V E N M E A NEW VISION OF MY WORLD, IT HAS GIVEN ME SO MUCH MORE— U N D E R S TA N D I N G , FRIENDS, HELPFUL AND CARING TEACHERS, D H H S U P P O R T, A N D A N AMAZING LEARNING E N V I R O N M E N T. I AM SPECIAL. I A M D E A F. A N D I A M D AW S O N . ” - D A W S O N P. , C L A S S O F 2 02 0 , E XC E R P T F R O M G R A D U AT I O N S P E E C H

“ M Y S O N Z AV I E R L O V E S

Early years of the

THE ECHO CENTER

Echo Center

BECAUSE IT IS A FUN PLACE WHERE HE C A N L E A R N A N D P L AY

Celebrating Echo Center Spirit Day

W I T H F R I E N D S T H AT How has the Echo Center changed over the years? “When I first started, the older educational model was that teachers went to different classes and didn’t stick with one grade level,” says Jennifer Mascolo, who has taught at Echo Horizon since 2002. “In the new model we have a home base in the classroom. And the technology has changed so much over the years. It’s fun to look back at pictures of the different FM and DM equipment.

Before I started working here, the students wore devices that had large external components. One of our parents used to make tank tops with a pocket in the back for the body processors that the kids wore.”

20

“And students used to have to remove their personal hearing devices to use school-issued ones, so that they could sync into the school system,” points out Renee. “Improved technology has made hearing aids more powerful. Twenty years ago, kids with a certain type of hearing loss wouldn’t have had access to all the sounds they can hear now. There’s noise buffering and bi-directional microphones that reduce background noise.”

Despite the changes, the goals and mission of the Echo Center remain the same. “When I think of the Echo Center I think of opportunity,” says Renee. “The Echo Center presents opportunities for the DHH students, the hearing students, really everyone who’s a part of this school. It makes the place inclusive and demands a focus on social-emotional development. For our professionals too, it’s an opportunity to grow in this unique setting. They develop their skills in education, differentiation, working with parents, collaborating with colleagues.

Of course it’s also an opportunity for me to be able to lead such a dream program.

It’s a family experience because my children are also students at Echo.”

“Opportunity is a good word,” agrees Jennifer. “Everyone mutually benefits from this program. It’s wonderful for all students. Teachers have to focus on the importance of communication in learning. Our general education teachers find that appealing too. Working with students with different needs has helped them improve as teachers. A lot of what we do to support our students is just good general teaching practice.“

H AV E H E A R I N G L O S S A N D T H O S E T H AT D O N O T. W E A G R E E W I T H Z AV I E R . T H I S V E R Y UNIQUE PROGRAM A L L O W S Z AV I E R T O B E F U L LY S U P P O R T E D WITH HIS LISTENING AND SPOKEN LANGUAGE GOALS ALONGSIDE HIS TYPICAL HEARING PEERS, INCLUDING HIS BIG SISTER PHYLICIA. THE ECHO CENTER IS SUPPORTIVE, CHALLENGING, AND DIVERSE, AND W E L O V E I T. ” - JEENA QUANSAH, E C H O C E N T E R PA R E N T

“It’s exciting that the school has continued and the work has continued,” says Carol. “It’s wonderful to see and meet the people who take care of the children now. It feels the same and for me, that’s good. It’s exciting when I think about what we were, fifty years ago, and what’s happened since then.”

“My predecessor, Vicki Ishida, should definitely be recognized for all the work she did in leading the program through many changes and supporting the families and the teachers,” says Renee.

“There are so many people to honor—the teachers and the aides and of course, the families. I also want to recognize Pamela Kelly, who has been Chair of the Board for the past five years, and a member of the Echo Center Board Committee for the last ten. She has always been a champion for the Echo Center.”

Day. At the Coffee Chat, we invite the community to gather for casual conversations on topics related to hearing loss.

We now partner with an educational audiologist. All the kids have their own managing audiologists and our teachers are great at working with them. However, we didn’t previously have one who worked with Echo. Now, our educational audiologist will help manage the equipment in the school setting and troubleshoot our technology.”

“We also do Lunch Bunch for the kids,” says Jennifer, “and a Faculty Book Club for Echo Center-related readings. We regularly give tips and information to all the faculty and staff. That outreach to parents, faculty, and staff has always been there but now it’s more scheduled and formalized. Renee is great at meeting the needs of the families to empower them.”

“There are definitely many teachers I could name,” adds Jennifer, “as well as Vicki Ishida. It’s always sad when people move on but also exciting to get new teams with different qualities and ways of doing things. I get to work with really amazing people, both in the Echo Center and in general education.”

“I think being an inclusive school, we are always doing our best to bring together our community, educate, and increase awareness,” adds Renee. “And with all the changes due to COVID-19, we continue to think anew of what we’re doing in light of the challenges.”

“We’ve made a lot of changes in the past couple of years,” says Renee. “We got upgraded hearing technology. We’ve implemented the Family Education Series, which provides support and connection to our Echo Center families and also our wider community. We also started the Echo Center Coffee Chat, which is linked in with Echo Center Spirit

When asked to reflect on the fiftieth anniversary of the Echo Center and what it means to them, Renee and Jennifer pause and smile. “It’s a community that I love, it’s my family,” says Jennifer. “It’s such a special and unique place. I don’t know how to put it into words. It’s an honor to be a part of it. My whole family has been able to experience this, since

my daughter is an Echo Horizon student.

The Echo Center kids love having their crew. When we did Kindergarten Memory Book this year, half of the DHH kids in Kindergarten said that Lunch Bunch was their favorite activity. I like that they have so many opportunities with peers who are similar to them and can support their growth.”

21

“When I think of the 50th anniversary of the Echo Center,” says Renee, “it makes me reflect on the rich history of the program and how established the Echo Center is despite the changes of the times. It reaffirms the Echo Center’s place as a leader in deaf education.

Fifty years is a long time to be setting the standard for a quality inclusion program. Because the Echo Center has gone through some changes, celebrating the 50th anniversary is celebrating its accomplishments.”

“It’s amazing to think that it’s been fifty years,” says Jennifer. “It’s grown and yet remains this solid program. I’m looking forward to the next 50 years—I’ll be here!”

“The learning never stops,” says Renee.

“Our model will evolve as technology does. I hope for continued growth. But I also know that at the heart we will stay the same caring, kind, proud community.

We will continue to nurture, educate, and empower deaf or hard-of-hearing children so that they go out into the world with joy, confidence, and knowledge.”

Over a five-day celebration, people enjoy food, fireworks, and time spent with friends and family. In the centuries since South Asians first began to observe Diwali, also known as the Festival of Lights, the holiday has gone global and is now celebrated all over the world. Echo Horizon parents have brought the celebration to the school, enriching our community and our students’ learning.

“Diwali at Echo Horizon really started with the parents,” says Kristen Reyna, Visual Arts educator. “Parents like Pooja Bhagat shared Diwali activities with their children’s classes. I approached Pooja to see if we could connect the art element of what she was doing with my younger classes so more children could experience it.”

Lights, colors, flowers, and food—

Diwali is India’s biggest and perhaps most important holiday.

“As a global arts program, we ground our work in the cultures of the world. The introduction of Diwali allowed us to expand the learning to Performing Arts and Music,” says Cathleen Wolff, Chair of the Arts Department and Music educator. “In Music we play the tabla and other traditional South Asian instruments. Parents are integral to this unit—they work with us and one another to bring the learning home.”

“The parents are great about teaching the traditions and what they mean,” says Kristen. “Their experience takes the learning so much deeper and brings it to life.”

23

“Our community is made up of many different cultures and I want them to be represented.”

- KRISTEN REYNA

All the parents collaborate on food for the celebration. Pooja (mother of a second grader and a fourth grader) creates rangoli with the students. Rangoli is a radial-balanced design made using flowers and colored powder and created on the ground at the entrance to homes to celebrate Diwali and welcome visitors. Rittu Kumar (mom to a first grader and a sixth-grader) teaches Khatak dance, Megha Shah (mom to a first grader, fourth grader, and fifth grader) teaches storytelling dances and helps with the ceremony. Pooja, Megha, and Vani Dandillaya (mom to a second grader) help to make and light the diyas. Diyas are small clay lamps that people light during Diwali. The students make clay diyas in art class.

“It has truly been a pleasure sharing the art form with the students,” says Rittu Kumar. “The wonder and intrigue seen in their eyes is heartwarming. I am very appreciative of the warmth extended by the teachers and administrators in inviting me and other parents to share our Diwali traditions and culture with the entire Echo Horizon community.”

Purpose Learning

24

New to Echo Horizon School, Purpose Learning is an interdisciplinary team-taught curriculum that aims to connect real-life community content with students’ own developing concept of purpose in their lives. This program was developed

by Head of School Peggy Procter and Jennie Willens, Director of Lower Elementary.

“At the Purpose Summit in Boulder, Colorado,” says Peggy, “we talked about how a sense of purpose is missing in young people’s lives today. Kids are stressed and parents are often criticized for it. Stanford Professor Will Damon, who wrote The Path to Purpose, said that purpose is ‘a stable and generalized intention to accomplish something that is at the same time meaningful to self and consequential for the world beyond.’

He believes that children who have no sense of meaning are the ones who feel lost and anxious. So our Purpose Learning program is making sure that kids can connect to their learning in a meaningful way.”

“We don’t know any other schools who are doing a purpose learning curriculum,” adds Jennie. “When we went to the Summit, it was also because we wanted to re-envision the sixth grade experience. We designed Echo’s purpose learning mission statement in Boulder, brought it back and started working with the team of teachers in Math, Science, Humanities, Makerspace, and the Library.

“We introduced the Human Library,” says Peggy, “which is a library of adults who have felt purpose in their own lives. These adults met with the students in a wonderful Human Library visit and answered their questions. We shared media about people who have framed their life work around the concept of purpose. The students found this inspirational!

“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed it’s the only thing that ever has.”

– MARGARET MEAD

The guiding principles for the purpose learning curriculum, based on the work of Project Wayfinder, are as follows: Prioritize internal motivation over external achievement Foster collaboration See teachers as mentors and coaches Take students out into the world Learn from failure Value students’ inner lives Start with the WHY

“We spent the first five weeks in self-exploration,” recalls Peggy. “In order for them to talk about larger issues, students need to first explore what matters to them and makes them tick. We did activities to learn about our personality and communication styles, build teamwork, engage in storytelling—all with many different adult mentors.”

“We intentionally grouped these activities for a high teacher-to-student ratio so that each adult could become a mentor,” notes Jennie. “The kids pushed back at the beginning! It made us realize how much this was needed. They wanted to know the answers and how purpose learning related to their core subjects. That led into an interesting discussion of what has value in education. The skills they develop in purpose learning are academic skills that will serve students well as they go on in their education.”

“We did a mini-unit on human-centered design thinking to design for a client and a mini-unit on social justice. Then, the following unit looked at our own city: how can you be a good community member? We used some of Mayor Garcetti’s initiatives: immigration, gender equity, homelessness, transportation, environmental sustainability, and education. We did a lot of reading, note-taking, and research in small groups.

Enhancing students’ research skills was a big part of the teaching. The students did amazing presentations, and that was where we ended right before we went into distance learning.”

“Our students really embraced social justice,” says Jennie.

“So we used the social justice lens to dig into the mayor’s initiatives. In early March we had four action projects that we were planning to work on with outside partners. Students would apply their design thinking and research skills to these real-world clients. With the shift to distance learning, we also shifted to thinking of the mayor’s initiatives in the lens of COVID-19.

“For the most part the students thrive on being challenged to take on an adult topic. They’re intellectually ready for it. How do you learn about issues, how do you approach them, how do you solve them? They felt empowered by being trusted to explore real-world problems. When you go on to middle and high school, these are skills that you need. We made sure when we designed this program that the skills they are learning are required in grades 7–12. This kind of curriculum can engage a lot of different kinds of learners in exciting ways.

Peers start to see each other for all of the depth that each person contributes. We saw engagement from students who felt empowered by this model in new ways.”

“Most people will eventually get to the place where their purpose is linked to social justice,” concludes Peggy. “But for now, how can students understand their interests and use those interests to do good? There is a difference between loving sports and using sports just to win and loving sports and using sports to make friends, build collaboration, create interconnectedness. This is students’ first sustained exposure to the idea that we have to stop being about ourselves. We have students who became passionate about gender equity, sustainability, LGBTQ rights. Watching their end-of the-year projects was jaw dropping. And I can’t wait to see how the program evolves in the next academic year!”

“PURPOSEFUL STUDENTS EXHIBIT HIGH DEGREES OF PERSISTENCE, RESILIENCE, RESOURCEFULNESS, A N D CA PAC I T Y F O R H E A LT H Y R I S K T A K I N G . ” — PAT R I C K C O O K - D E E G A N , FOUNDER AND DIRECTOR OF P R O J E C T WAY F I N D E R

SINGAPORE MATH

Going strong for over a decade, the Singapore Math program at Echo Horizon brings a throughline of learning for grades K–6. “Singapore Math scaffolds upon students’ foundational skills,” says Rachel Lewis, Echo Horizon’s Singapore Math Specialist. “We teach skills in Kindergarten that they’re going to use throughout the program, right through sixth grade. For example, our young students learn number bonds and decomposing and composing numbers. They’ll use these in sixth grade too, but they’re going to apply them to higher-level math concepts like decimals or fractions.

“Take the simple idea of a number bond of part-part-whole, the concept of which is first introduced in Kindergarten.

Students use that to do bar modeling in third grade. In upper grades, we progress the bar model philosophy and skills and apply them to different concepts like ratios and percents. Despite the increased complexity, students are still using the idea of parts and whole.”

If you ask “why” about Singapore Math, then you’ve already found your answer!

Singapore Math teaches the “why” behind math and not just the “how.”

“We’re not just teaching them computation and algorithms with steps,” notes Rachel. “We’re teaching them why this works. Math is not a random thing that someone decided. It exists because it works and you can actually show it and manipulate it. We have students use objects or pictures to represent the math and then translate that to the conceptual idea of these numbers and processes. They understand the steps because they’ve already represented them with objects or pictorially and then translated them to the conceptual idea of adding, subtracting, and dividing. This way, math makes more sense to the students and they tend to have a better retention of it. Students can also apply their understanding to new concepts as they learn them.”

Learning is also reinforced by students writing out their problems in words or verbally explaining how they arrived at their solutions. “The students always want to say, ‘Well let me just show you.’

I encourage them to show with their words. It’s often difficult for kids to take what’s in their heads and articulate it in language, but it’s a really important skill,” says Rachel.

Rachel Lewis supports the teachers with curriculum development. “I’m the person who knows all the grade levels and I know where the students are coming from and where they’re going. I help teachers plan their lessons if they need it.

I may come up with projects or games. If parents have questions about the math curriculum, I’m the go-to person who can answer that question with the parent. I go into the classrooms each week and I may do a demo lesson or work with a small group or individual students.

“ W H E N I T H I N K A B O U T S I N G A P O R E M AT H , I T H I N K ABOUT THE EMPHASIS ON BOTH CONCEPTUAL AS WELL AS A B S T R A C T U N D E R S TA N D I N G . S T U D E N T S A R E P R O V I D E D W I T H A C U R R I C U L U M T H AT R E Q U I R E S T H E M T O U N D E R S TA N D M AT H PRINCIPLES AND CONCEPTS FROM DIFFERENT LENSES, POSITIONING THEM TO BE ABLE TO MAKE CONNECTIONS AND S E E T H E R E L AT I O N S H I P B E T W E E N M AT H E M AT I C A L I D E A S . ” —HALEY BROOKS, 4TH GRADE TEACHER

“With parents, I let them know that Singapore Math is not new math, it’s just different from how we learned it.

At Echo, we’re giving students opportunities to explore math more and not saying there’s just one right way to do it.

We’ve had parents who had the experience of being told as children that even though they got the right answer, they did the math wrong. That doesn’t exist at Echo. If you can explain and support your answer and strategy, that is fine because that’s how your brain understands the concept. If we’re explaining the why, students can get to the how.

“For example, when I visit a class, we may get together on the carpet, give kids a problem, and ask them to solve it as many different ways as they can think of in their minds,” she continues. “In pairs, students share how they arrived at their solutions while the teacher records it. What we now know about math, especially about math fluency, is that it incorporates flexibility in math thinking, rather than speed and accuracy. A student who might memorize 7x4 and can give you an instant answer would be considered fluent. But a child for whom memorization doesn’t work can say, ‘I know my twos really well, so if I do 7x2 and then double that, I’ll get the answer.’ That person might not be as fast as the student who can memorize it, but that flexibility in thinking about and understanding math says a lot more.

27

“The teachers and I have big discussions about how we’re testing our kids’ fluency and what information tests give us. We talk about the purpose of assessment.

It’s a conversation that we have at every grade level every year. What does assessment tell us about where the students are and what our goals are? What type of instruction would be best? How does it affect groupings? What concepts need to be reinforced? It’s a self-reflection for teachers as well. We look at the progress each student is making and where they’re at as individuals.”

As your students progress at Echo Horizon, look for some of our signature math projects like Geometry City, Road Trip Planning, Biz World, Budgets, and Decimal Menus. And if you have any questions, feel free to ask. We love talking about math!

Echo Horizon Class of

28 Ruby Lanet

2008

“Echo prepared me in a wonderful way with communication and self-advocacy,” says Ruby Lanet, who came to Echo Horizon as a Kindergartner and matriculated to Marlborough School. ”I learned how to communicate with teachers and classmates. As a person with hearing loss, these are essential skills.” Ruby is deaf in one ear and hard of hearing in the other, and wears a hearing aid.

At Marlborough, Ruby focused on photography and theater.

“Theater meant community to me, while photography was the art form I was more focused on. I’ve always been someone who thinks things through visually. Who knows—that may be because of my hearing loss.” Ruby acted in all the Marlborough stage productions from 8th grade until she graduated.

She participated in juried photography shows and won Scholastic awards in photography. Ruby served as co-editor of The Edge, the annual Marlborough literary and arts publication and published photos and prose. She was also involved with Camp Harmony, a summer camp for homeless youth, both as a camp counselor and member of Camp Harmony leadership.

Ruby was awarded a Humanitarian Award and scholarship from California Youth Think Tank.

Ruby matriculated to Wesleyan University, where she pursued a film degree. “I really loved how film merged what I’d been learning through theatre and photography—it’s such a succinct art form. For now, I’m most interested in documentary filmmaking. It’s exciting for me to be a part of non-fiction storytelling, thinking through how documentaries can be most useful, and least exploitative. I care about how people’s stories are told.”

After graduating from Wesleyan in 2018, Ruby became a freelance documentary researcher. “I’m currently working on a documentary on voter suppression. On the archival team, I conduct the research behind the fact checking, and am responsible for ensuring that the content stays accurate through the editing process. I use our historical research with an eye to the visuals to see what would be best for the film. I enjoy approaching research projects through an aesthetic lens.

29

“Some of my favorite memories of Echo are being in the Library—I loved Ms. Brown. I think that the way the Library and Technology Department worked together was ahead of its time. I was growing up when so much was changing with technology and research, and yet I had first-hand access to excellent resources and technology, and that was exciting.

“The Echo Center program gave me confidence that I have taken through my life. The program set me up with a support system and made everything feel doable. I got the right amount of support, yet it wasn’t so all-encompassing that it was too hard of a transition when I graduated.

“Echo created an environment where people truly thought about the Points of Pride—respect, citizenship, responsibility, fairness, trustworthiness, and caring,” reflects Ruby. “I still think about them! It was a magical community to grow up in. I also made a lot of my best friends at Echo and many of them I’m still friends with. I think my parents found a strong community too. . . . We remain in touch with a lot of Echo Horizon families—it’s still a world we feel a part of.”

Alumni Highlights

30

Seth Kleinberg CLASS OF 2014

From a young age, Seth Kleinberg was interested in lighting design. “Ms. Wolff and Ms. Camacho introduced me to the design side of lighting and let me run the light board for shows. I worked on the Lip Sync show, Winter Program, and arts showcases. I would ask them what color lights they wanted for the numbers and I would do the best I could to put those looks on stage for the acts. In fifth and sixth grade, I worked with Ms. Wolff and Ms. Camacho to redesign which color lights we used and replace the gels and refocus them.”

After he graduated from Echo Horizon and went to Oakwood, Seth continued to work in the technical theater world. “At Echo I worked on the design side of lighting. But I hadn’t really done the technical part, focusing and hanging lights, until Oakwood. I’ve worked in every position on a show that you can work. I hung lights and that extended to school events and all the small setups around the school. And then finally in 10th grade I started designing for the mainstage shows. Last year we did Chicago, which I took to the International Thespian Festival in Upland, CA. My presentation was on Chicago—the lighting and scenic design—and that won the lighting category at the Festival and was ranked “Superior” in the Scenic Category.

“I want to pursue this in college. At Washington University in St. Louis, I plan to study for an engineering degree and take it back to theater work after graduating. Engineers have advised our theater program at Oakwood and that inspired me. At Oakwood, we do three events each year in STEAM and that’s also been inspirational.

My brother Jordan is involved in it too. Oakwood has won two out of

Sofia Klein CLASS OF 2018

Sofia came to Echo Horizon in Kindergarten and graduated with her class in 2018. “From the earliest days I had so much fun,” she recalls.

“The friendships I made, the way the teachers made it enjoyable to learn. A lot of projects stand out to me: We read The Odyssey in sixth grade and connected it to our work in other subjects. For example, in Visual Arts we put plaster on our faces to make masks of people from Greek mythology! In fifth grade we had Pre-K buddies, and in sixth grade we had Kindergarten buddies. I loved connecting with the little kids. Another highlight for me was the Third Grade Living Museum, where we took on the role of a historical person. I was Sacajawea. Echo really taught me to explore my interests, focus on my work, and give it 110 percent.

“I remember that the teachers went out of their way to help the students. In Makerspace, I was sewing a really big blanket for a project and Dr. Patterson helped me but also let me figure things out on my own. He taught me to sew, fix the sewing machine, and cut out a pattern. Ms. Baltazar in sixth-grade Humanities was really kind and encouraging to me. She helped me with public speaking and my sixth-grade speeches. I did Yearbook Club with Ms. Camacho and she taught me how to make the layouts. She was so kind and we always joked around.

“There’s so much that I learned at Echo that has helped me in my life now,” Sofia says. “I learned to try new things. Last year in seventh

the last four years and four out of four in the regional! We’ve worked on a JPL invention challenge, in which we had to build a device to accomplish certain tasks. For Toyota Murai, we had to design a 1/10th scale car powered by hydrogen. We have a hydrogen-fueled cell on the car and it converts hydrogen gas to electricity. It’s a race that lasts six hours or however long your car can keep going! We’ve gone to 20 races within the U.S. and twice to international competitions in Prague.

“I think the passion that I found at Echo in lighting design and the arts and science really shaped the way that I approached my projects at Oakwood, which depended on teamwork and collaboration. Ms. Wolff and Ms. Camacho showed me how to develop these interests. The encouragement and responsibility they gave me to explore my interests was so foundational. They trusted the expensive theater equipment to a fifth grader and that’s not something that your typical elementary school would do. It was really cool and paved the way for my future.”

31

grade I was the class president and I won the Emerging Leader award.” At Marlborough, the award goes to one student in each grade who does a great job being a leader and who cares about the Marlborough environment. “This year I did cross country as well as soccer. I joined choir. I am also playing tennis, which is really fun.

I am a co-leader of the Organized Latina Exchange, which is an affinity group. All the OLE members meet to talk and share cultural traditions. My favorite class right now is Algebra—it’s my favorite subject.

“The teachers at Echo wanted us to succeed and I always had a good relationship with them. When I went to Marlborough, I was never afraid to ask my teachers for help or to meet with them one-on-one. And I also learned, from my very earliest days at Echo, how to have good relationships with my classmates. I know how to handle interpersonal dynamics with others. I played basketball and volleyball and did track at Echo. Through that I learned how to be a team player, which also helped me when I graduated and went on in life.”

Alumni Day 2020 Alumni Day 2020 was virtual, but that didn’t stop our Hawks from having a blast. There was an escape room, a Jeopardy! game, and lots of laughter. We loved reconnecting with our alumni—our returning graduates went all the way back to 1992! We look forward to seeing you again in the real world!

We Recommend There are books that I can literally not put down when I finish them, and The Dutch House by Ann Patchett is one of those books. I still can’t bring myself to relegate it to a shelf, so it continues to sit in plain sight.

Spanning five decades, it is the story about two siblings and a house. Indeed, the house is as big a character in this story as any of the many people populating it. The plot revolves around Danny and his sister, Maeve, and is narrated

by Danny. In a fairy tale evil stepmother telling, both are turned out of the house when their father remarries. The story then is about two very smart individuals who cannot overcome their past and, despite their very different life paths, are only truly comfortable when they’re together. The Dutch House is about love, forgiveness, families, inheritance, and so very much more.

32

CLAUDETTE BROWN, LIBRARIAN

I recommend The Woman in the Window by A.J. Finn.

This psychological thriller is not for the faint of heart! I ordered this book to read during quarantine without realizing that the plot revolves around a woman who suffers from agoraphobia (fitting right?), witnesses a crime from inside her house, and struggles to convince anyone that the crime really happened. I don’t think I have ever read a book before this that has actually caused me to utter a vocal exclamation! On a more serious note, I found myself thinking about how we are often quick to discredit those we deem to suffer from a “mental illness” and how easily their voices can be silenced due to circumstantial evidence and stereotypes.

If you want to appreciate the time in which you live, I recommend The Mirror & the Light by Hilary Mantel. It’s the last in a trilogy about Thomas Cromwell and the beauty, horror, and strife in King Henry’s VIII’s reign. If you’re new to the trilogy, start at the beginning with the first novel and winner of the Booker Prize, Wolf Hall. You won’t be able to put it down. I don’t know how Hilary Mantel knows all that she does about the minutiae of life in late Renaissance Europe or the inner workings of Cromwell’s mind, but she seems to have time traveled there and been a silent ghost at his side. This was perfect quarantine reading— absorbing, escapist, with occasional mentions of self-isolating to avoid the Black Plague. Not to mention that reading about a ruler who can behead or burn people on a whim really makes me appreciate our Constitution and the rights and freedoms it guarantees.

AMINA SHARMA, DIRECTOR OF MARKETING AND COMMUNICATIONS

MICHAELA SUMMERS, PERFORMING ARTS

Brené Brown continues to amaze me with her wisdom and guidance. In Dare to Lead, Brown uses her own leadership experiences to shine a light on how to lead with courage and vulnerability.

Brown uses humor and rigorous honesty to inspire others to be honest with themselves and others.

She encourages leaders to spend time on understanding their own fears and feelings.

And then she offers strategies and protocols that can tap into personal strengths and personal weaknesses in order to bring people together. My copy is covered in coffee stains and well-marked pages that I am sure I will go back to often!

TEACHER/AFTERSCHOOL RECREATION

JENNIE WILLENS, DIRECTOR OF LOWER

COUNSELOR

ELEMENTARY

After reading Ta-Nehisi Coates’s Between the World and Me, and hearing him speak in conversation with Black Panther director Ryan Coogler, I couldn’t wait to get my hands on his newest book and first novel, The Water Dancer. I am happy to say that it lived up to expectations. It is an epic novel that moves from the plantations of rural Virginia to the idealistic North and focuses on the life of one man, Hiram Walker, born to an enslaved mother who was sold away shortly after his birth and a white plantation owner father. The book vividly portrays the atrocity of the Deep South, the pain of loss and separation, and the damage it inflicted on generations of families, while also highlighting the resilience of the human spirit to overcome and survive. And, what a pleasure it was to learn that the stunningly beautiful book cover was created by none other than Echo Horizon parent and artist extraordinaire Calida Rawles using Echo Horizon parent Jeena Quansah as her model. Finally, having the opportunity to see Calida’s exhibit of Water Dancer paintings at a Hollywood gallery with our sixth-grade Purpose Learning students was just the icing on the cake!

PEGGY PROCTER, HEAD OF SCHOOL

The Phantom Tollbooth

By Norman Juster

The Odyssey

By Homer

It’s a story about this kid named Milo and he goes on adventures. I think you should read this book because it has a lot of funny things in it, like The Spelling Bee who spells everything he says. You will like this book if you are silly like me.

I recommend The Odyssey by the famous greek poet Homer, adapted into a graphic novel by Gareth Hinds. The book mixes the beauty of imagery and fantasy portrayed in Greek mythology into an inspiring and exciting read for all ages. The profound quotes within will inspire you, and the action and tension will fill you with awe. Immerse yourself in the grand adventure of one man as he faces cyclops, gods, and his own twisting fate.

LUCERNE COHEN, KINDERGARTEN

Islandborn

By Junot Díaz

Illustrator: Leo Espinoza I like it because the main character stands up for herself and she gets really creative.

I recommend it because she gets creative and focused on one thing, and she gets it done.

MONROE JORDAN, 1ST GRADE

RAFA GUTIERREZ, 5TH GRADE

The Boxcar Children Book Series

By Gertrude Chandler Warner I like the Boxcar Children series because I like reading about the four children in the Alden family and how they solve mysteries all over the world. I recommend the book series because the stories make you feel like you are solving the mysteries with the characters.

KAVYA DANDILLAYA, 2ND GRADE

33

Caraval

By Stephanie Garber I like this book because it has a very interesting plot and the characters are well written. I could very well imagine meeting them and as you read, you can feel like you are truly within this fantastical world.

A very good mixture between fantasy and romance, with plot twists that leave you reeling—this is probably one of my favorite trilogies.

GALILEO BATIZ SHTROMBERG, 6TH GRADE

Our Students Recommend

2019 – 2020

34 Report on Philanthropy

“ I N E V E R Y C R I S I S , D O U B T O R C O N F U S I O N , TA K E T H E H I G H E R PAT H — T H E P AT H O F C O M P A S S I O N , C O U R A G E , U N D E R S TA N D I N G A N D L O V E . ” —AMIT RAY, INDIAN AUTHOR AND SPIRITUAL MASTER BEST KNOWN FOR HIS BOOKS AND TEACHINGS ON MEDITATION, YOGA, AND PEACE

In September 2019, at the start of the school year, I gave a presentation at our annual Back to School Night. I shared with our community a moment from my vacation earlier that summer: a field of sunflowers I encountered while bicycling through France, in the midst of a family vacation that hadn’t gone exactly as planned. I stopped my bicycle that day and took a photo of the sea of flowers, their faces all turned toward the sun. Their uniform dedication seemed like an act of radical optimism. It took my breath away.

Later, I had a similar experience. The day after I announced that our school would be closing due to COVID-19, I looked out my living room window to see not only a rainbow, but a double rainbow forcing its way through the clouds. In the face of the unknown and frightening, there it was again: a dose of radical optimism, just when I needed it most.

35

I let that optimism carry me through the first few weeks of the safer-at-home order. But by mid-April, things were still unsure, and the Leadership Team and I made a decision to reach out to every family in our community. In doing so, we realized that while most were faring well, some were facing unforeseen challenges: their friends or family were ill and/or far away, they were experiencing furloughs, or job losses.

Together with the Echo Horizon School Board of Trustees and Advancement team, we came up with a plan, and we quickly launched a Community Assistance Fund, designed to support those affected by bolstering the over $800,000 in tuition assistance we provide each year. We weren’t sure what to set as a goal, but decided ultimately to side with optimism, and aimed high.

In less than two weeks, with the help of our Board, our faculty and staff, and our community of current and alumni families, we surpassed that goal. In what was nothing less than an act of radical optimism, our community showed that we were capable of greeting any challenge that came our way with grace and fortitude.

The radical optimism and abundant joy that our community has shown time and again during this long pandemic reminds me of those glorious rainbows and sunflowers. I know, deep in my heart, that our connection holds strong and that we will be together again soon in the joyful engaged learning community that is Echo Horizon.

With love,

Peggy Procter Head of School

Your Support

36

With our community’s support, our faculty and staff learned and honed their skills with essential professional development. This enabled them to stay up-to-date on best practices and innovative strategies, especially when it came to supporting our young students with distance learning. This professional development included: Activity-Based Mindfulness for Kids with Susan Kaiser Greenland, Pasadena, CA Creative Dance for Adults, Los Angeles, CA CAIS, Development Conference for Newcomers, Seattle, WA CATDC, Adapting to a New Normal: Tips & Tools for Engaging and Supporting All Elementary Students with Online Learning, Online CATDC, Facilitating Participatory Decision Making, Pasadena, CA CATDC, Redefining Student Life for Distance Learning (facilitator), Online CITE, California IT in Education, Anaheim, California Creating Balance in an Unjust World: A STEM and Social Justice Conference, Honolulu, Hawaii CSEE, Deans Summit (facilitator), Online CSEE, How to Listen and Have Civil Discourse, Washington, DC CUE, Online Everyday Arts Workshop, Onsite Designing the Library During Covid-19, Online Finalsite, School Marketing Day, Online Fountas and Pinnell Guided Reading Workshop, Los Angeles, CA Fountas and Pinnell, Phonics, Spelling, and Word Study, Online Harvard University, Early Education Leadership, Online Kennedy Center, Processing Together: Arts Education for Students with Disabilities During COVID-19 Level Up Activities for Remote Learning, Online Lucy Calkins Writers Workshop, New York City, NY Luna Dance Institute, Dance Integration Across Curricula, Online Luna Dance Institute, Teaching Dance From a Distance, Online Luna Dance Summer Institute, Berkeley and Oakland, CA and Online Mindful Schools Fundamentals, Online Mindful Schools Year-Long Teacher Certification Program, Colorado and Online National Association of Independent Schools (NAIS) Conference (attendees and presenters), Philadelphia, PA NAIS People of Color Conference (attendees and presenters), Seattle, WA NBOA, NBOA School Finance for Non-Business Leaders, Online NDEO, How to Zoom: The Inside Story of Teaching Online NDEO, Identifying Promising Strategies: Ideas for Online NDEO, Teaching Dance Virtually for Students with Disabilities, Online Responsive Classroom Elementary Training, Culver City, CA and Portland, OR NAIS People of Color Conference, Seattle, WA Pre-K–12 Human Sexuality Education with Debbie Roffman, Online Southern California Librarians of Independent Schools, Managing the Library/Covid-19, Online Teaching While White, Los Angeles, CA The Latest COVID-19 Developments and How They Impact Faculty and Staff with Liebert, Cassidy, Whitmore, Online University of Minnesota, Zoom and Distance Learning, Online

37

38

The Board Thank You of Trustees Parents Pamela Kelly, Chair Akeem Ayeni, Vice Chair Dr. Eraka Bath, Vice President Toan Tran, Vice President Ken Nakayama, Secretary Darren Dworkin, Treasurer Dawn Barrett, Trustee Charlotte Hughes, Trustee Bruno Lambertini, Trustee Dr. Julie Marsh, Trustee Josh Oppenheimer, Trustee Donna Raphael, Trustee Jessica Samet, Trustee Peter Scott, Trustee Sharon Tal Yguado, Trustee Robert Thun, Trustee Gary Weisserman, Trustee William Luxford, M.D., Trustee Emeritus Christie Roberts and Tamara Umansky, Parent Association Presidents

Thank you to our 2019–2020 Parent Association Officers, Committee Chairs, and Room Parents! This year, our parent volunteers dedicated their time to school events, classroom activities, field trips, teacher appreciation, and supporting our community during distance learning.

Parent Association Leadership PRESIDENTS

Christie Roberts and Tamara Umansky

VICE PRESIDENTS

Heather Cox, Vera Nazzal, Jeena Quansah (Echo Center)

SECRETARY

Jennifer O’Brien

TREASURER

Greg Lombardo

Committee Chairs

HALLOWEEN CARNIVAL

ALL-SCHOOL FUN DAY

HOLIDAY GIF T COMMIT TEE

Chair: Ginger Norman

BACK-TO-SCHOOL NIGHT Chair: Lauren Howard

BOOK FAIR

Chairs: Jonathan Lane, Wendy Lane Jr. Chairs: John Johnston, Maya Jordan

Chair: Marjan Kashefi

HOT LUNCH/BURGER TRUCK

Chair: Samantha Lombardo (Hot Lunch) Chair: Jay Carson (Burger Truck)

PRE-K

Amy Cooper, Alexia Landeau, Rachel Rosales

KINDERGARTEN

Ryan Karp, Ginger Norman

FIRST GRADE

Maya Jordan, Allison Strina

Chairs: Kerry Green, Laura Reider, Tamara Umansky Jr. Chair: Johanna Appel

JEDI COMMIT TEE

Chairs: Maya Jordan, Alexia Landeau, Elisha Levin, Satiya Witzer

SECOND GRADE

CELEBRATION OF BOOKS

LOST AND FOUND

THIRD GRADE

Chair: Rose Eapen Banner Chair: Leah Lehmbeck

COMMUNIT Y OUTRE ACH

Chairs: Heather Kun, Jennie Willens

GRANDPARENTS & SPECIAL FRIENDS DAY Chairs: Samantha Lombardo, Gillian Nalibotsky

HALLOWEEN CANDY COLLECTION Chair: Heather Cox

Chairs: Sandra Montiel, Andy Theiss

POP SICLES IN THE PARK Chair: Christie Roberts

SCHOOL PICTURES

Chairs: Jeena Quansah, Phillip Quansah Jr. Chair: Tamara Umansky

SPIRIT WE AR

Chairs: Boaz Lev-Ari, Ziad Toubassy

TE ACHER/STAFF APPRECIATION Chair: Sharolyn Davis Jr. Chair: LeShay Boyce

39

Room Parents

Eric Appel, Johanna Appel, Ziad Toubassy

Kerry Green, Ruth Milway

FOURTH GRADE

Pooja Bhagat, Megha Sata

FIF TH GRADE

Sharon Elkus, Samantha Lombardo, Yulia McAfee

SIXTH GRADE

Eraka Bath, Anita Dashiell-Sparks, Sharolyn Davis, Emily Fox

TOTAL INCOME Tuition & Fees

92.8%

Fundraising

6.9%

Investments

0.3%

2019–2020 Financial Report

40

TOTAL EXPENDITURES Compensation

62.9%

Programs & Operations

17.9%

41

Financial Aid

10.9% Facility

8.3%

SUMMARY OF FUNDRAISING Annual Giving: $297,186 Community Assistance Fund: $75,650

2019–2020 Annual Giving

42

Echo Horizon School gratefully acknowledges the generous annual contributions from our donors. These contributions supplement the annual operating budget and are essential to our programs, tuition assistance, and professional development. The donors listed below allow Echo Horizon to continue to provide an exceptional education to our students and we give our sincerest thanks for their caring and commitment.

Visionary

Angel

Thomas Gallagher � Pamela & Peter Kelly � 5 ♡

Dawn Barrett Amy Cooper & Samuel Baum ♡ Valerie & Faraz Daneshgar Jane Yen & George Ho Heather Kun & Chris Iorillo 5 ♡ Laura & Andre James ♡ Kristin Kobayashi & Joseph Kung Michelle Martinez & Corey LoPrete ♡ Julie Marsh & Steve Mayer � 5 ♡ Gillian & Abram Nalibotsky ♡ Vera & George Nazzal 5 ♡ Lucy & Josh Oppenheimer 5 ♡ Rachel & Jake Robards ♡ Jessica & Scott Samet � 5 Linda & Thomas Tierney ♡ Anthony Danna & Ziad Toubassy ♡ Sarah Treem ♡ Kelly & Colin Whitney

$25,000 and up

$2,500-$4,999

Benefactor

$15,000-$24,999 Charlotte Hughes & Christopher Combs � 5 ♡ Sharon & Kovi Elkus Lori Shiotani & Ken Nakayama � 5 ♡ Sharon & Joshua Yguado 5 ♡

Champion

$10,000-$14,999 Anonymous (1) Peggy Procter & John Johnston ♡ � Alison & Jason Kaplan ♡ Patricia & Bruno Lambertini ♡

Guardian

$5,000-$9,999 Anonymous (1) Tracey & Akeem Ayeni � 5 ♡ Pamela & Jared Bush Joanne Yoon & Heriberto Diaz ♡ Kori & Darren Dworkin � 5 Alexia Landeau 5 Jennifer Wang & Tony Lin Samantha & Gregory Lombardo 5 ♡ Christie & John Roberts Kristen Weirick & Laurae Rossi Emily Fox & Peter Scott 5 ♡ Jola & Robert Thun � 5

� GP = Grandparent

� A = Alumni

Believer

$1,500-$2,499

43

Toba Khedoori & Eric Allaway ♡ Carly & Jay Carson Vani & Ram Dandillaya Eraka Bath & Alexandre Fortuit 5 Melissa & Michael Hohmann Tamara Umansky & Boaz Lev-Ari Michelle Dean & Eric Lorenzini ♡ Lara Azzopardi-Robinson & John Robinson ♡ Megha Sata & Nihar Shah ♡ Jennifer & David Stone ♡ Michelle & Greg Suess Satiya & Jared Witzer 5 ♡ Natalie Moreland & Kyle Zanocco

5 = 5 or more years of giving � F/S = Faculty/Staff

♡ CAF=Community Assistance Fund donor

Patron

Supporter

Laura Reider & Scott Abrahamson 5 Melinda & Paul Blechner Roger Bridges � ♡ Kendall & Louis Brooks Claudette Brown 5 � Alison & Larry Cobar Pauline Wu & Carlos Fua 5 Alok Gupta Heather Cox & Chris Koch Giselle & Mazen Nazzal � Susan Samarge-Powell & Tyrone Powell Donna & Jorge Raphael � 5 ♡ Cecil & Paul Slye � 5 Andy Snavley 5 Kerry Green & Chad Wasser ♡ Alycia Degen & Leslie Wootton Cynthia Park & Brian Yum

Felix Alvarado � Ursula Aris � 5 Cori Ayandele � Elena Shtromberg & Aravier Batiz 5 Debbie Briggs � � 5 ♡ Haley Brooks � Alicia Camacho � 5 ♡ Jennifer Canelli � 5 Nicole & Kermit Cannon Angel Carrillo � Mayra Castellanos � Mirielle Jacobson & Tom Chang Danielle Clark � Caroline Combs � ♡ Jasa Denny � Amanda & Brian Egan Ellis Enlow � 5 Zoe Fabian � Francisco Felix � Elizabeth Fellner-Nelson � Jose Figueroa � 5 Yohanna Barth-Rogers & Samuel Frost Sarah Gonzalez � Cara Horowitz & Stefan Grunspan � 5 Ashley Guitron � 5 Regina Gusman � 5 Amina Sharma & Daniel Gutierrez � Bryanna Hammett � Ya’Landa Harris Susan Hoover John Riordan Plumbing Angie Winslow & Danny Klein Sandra Montiel & Ray Klein � 5 Sharon & Harrison Lee Leah & Jason Lehmbeck Rachel Lewis � 5 Rosalina & Edwin Lopez 5 Renee & Robert Lucero � Susan Macahilig � 5 Sandra Martinez Jennifer & Mark Mascolo � 5 Nicole & Willie McMahon 5 Allie Melendez � Annie & Andre Miyao Gabriella Mosci

Up to $499

$1,000-$1,499

44 Friend

$500-$999

Anonymous Johanna & Eric Appel Kimberly Tominaga & Dane Barata Ruth Milway & James Bursey Jennifer Blum & Adam Cotsen � 5 The Haghighi Family Sherre & Jeffrey Hirsch � 5 Lauren & David Howard 5 Kelly & Jeffrey Hwang Ryann & Timothy Karp Kevin Gruenberg & Christine Kim 5 Rittu Kumar 5 Wendy & Jonathan Lane Alexis Lerner 5 Kedran & Stavros Panageas ♡ Karina & Nihar Patel Jessica & Jeron Smith Jaymi Smith Allison & Philip Strina

� GP = Grandparent

� A = Alumni

5 = 5 or more years of giving � F/S = Faculty/Staff

Jennifer & Casey O’Brien Alexis Okihara � Jacqueline Olivier � Jennifer Ordonez � Devin Palty � Sam Patterson � 5 Suzanne & Marc Pitre Jeena & Philip Quansah Carmie Rehor � Kristen Reyna � 5 Melissa & Dee Robertson Ng Vuong & Max Robinson Rosemary Roman � Cari & Scott Rosen � 5 ♡ Kellie & Michael Rosen 5 Isabel Sanchez � Lisbeth Sinclair Myah Smith Lisa Sorrentino � 5 ♡ Alex Sowa � 5 Saundra Sparks � 5 Caitlin Stephens � Madeline & Ian Stewart Sara Adelman & Jeremy Stoller Melissa Stoller � Kerri Stoughton-Jackson Lori Zukerman & Tom Strouse � 5 Kille Knobel & Rick Stucker 5 Michaela Summers � Annie DiMascio & Adam Tessitore Lisa Kors & Andy Thiess 5 Lauren Thurmond � Sheryl Udell � 5 Nora & Peter Wendle � 5 Ashley Whitelaw � Jennie & Jake Willens � Cathleen Wolff � 5 Pooja Bhagat & Hugh Wright 5 Sherif Zakaria �

Foundations & Corporations The California Wellness Foundation John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts Robert and Ann Stephanie Gittleman Charitable Trust Sony Pictures The Wonderful Company

♡ CAF=Community Assistance Fund donor

P EG GY P R O CT E R Head of School

R O G E R B RI D G E S

Associate Head of School for Advancement, Equity, Inclusion, and Counseling

SAUNDRA SPARKS

Chief Financial Officer

RE NEE P OL ANC O LUCER O

Director of the Echo Center

LEADERSHIP TEAM AB E NI BI A S

Director of Admission

MEG BALTAZ AR

Director of Teaching and Learning

45

J UL I A B LO UN T

Director of Upper Elementary

J E N N I E W I LLE N S Director of Lower Elementary

E C H O H O R I Z O N AT A G L A N C E Written and edited by Amina Sharma

180 E N R O L L M E N T:

SCHOOL HOURS: 8 : 3 0 A M - 3 : 0 0 P M ( M O N .-T H U R S ) 8 : 3 0 A M - 2 : 0 0 P M ( F R I D AY )

Morning care and AfterSchool Program provided but subject to change due to COVID-19.

The first Pinwheels for Peace were installed on Sept. 21, 2005.

Since then, the project has grown from 1,400 locations and 500,000 pinwheels planted the first year, to over 3,500 locations around the world and 4.5 million pinwheels!

GRADES:

PRE –K-6

L O C AT I O N :

3430 McManus Avenue Culver City, CA S T U D E N T-T O -T E A C H E R R AT I O :

PRE –K 8:1 K

10:1

1-6 12:1

Cover art Pinwheels for Peace is an Echo Horizon School tradition. It began in 2005 as an art installation created by two teachers from Florida, Ann Ayers and Ellen McMillan. They wanted to give their students a way to express their feelings about world events and their lives. It is their hope that through the Pinwheels for Peace project we can all make a public visual statement about our feelings about war/peace/tolerance/ cooperation/harmony/unity and, in some way, maybe, awaken the public and let them know what we are thinking.

1983 15% 50% Founded in

of our students are deaf or hard-of-hearing of our students identify as people of color

A C C R E D I TAT I O N :

California Association of Independent Schools, Western Association of Schools and Colleges

Our students come from 49 different zip codes within Los Angeles County

Each year every student in our school creates a pinwheel in art class. In honor of International Peace Day, the students plant their pinwheels on the front lawn to make a public visual statement for peace.

Photography Alicia Camacho Amina Sharma Jay Sharman Design and Printing Nick Steinhardt for SMOG Design, Inc. Colornet Press Financials Saundra Sparks Annual Giving Lisa Sorrentino The Annual Report reflects gifts made to Echo Horizon School between July 1, 2019 and June 30, 2020. We have made every effort to ensure the accuracy of all information contained in this report. If you find a discrepancy, we sincerely apologize and ask that you bring it to our attention. Please contact Director of Marketing and Communications Amina Sharma at asharma@echohorizon.org.

3430 McManus Avenue Culver City, CA 90232-7407 T: 310-838-2442 TTY: 310-202-7201 echohorizon.org

FSC