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Summer 2021 Field Trips

With Extended School Year underway, our Felicity students have been able to have increased opportunities to go on outings, which has been a creative way to work on social emotional skill building during ESY as well. The field trips from Summer 2021 have included the following: Athletico, Lamb’s Farm, Vollo Auto Museum, The Glenn, Antioch Movie Theater and Pinstripes.

At the local Athletico center, staff encouraged students to work on team building skills through and Capture The Flag. Additionally, Felicity students were able to go to Lamb’s Farm in Libertyville to play mini golf, visit the discovery center featuring exotic birds, puppies and kittens, as well as feed some of the farm animals (i.e. goats, llamas, a camel, horses, cows, tortoises and ducks). Vollo Auto Museum is a Felicity favorite that gives students the opportunity to see historic cars and walk through many different types of showrooms. The Glenn provided an opportunity for students to get a tour of the forest preserve as well as having some extra time to go fishing afterwards. At Antioch Movie Theater, students were able to get a private movie viewing of “Stand By Me”. For the last field trip of the school year, students and staff got the opportunity to play three games of bowling at Pinstripes with lunch and drinks provided.

Please see our photo gallery below for a small glimpse into our field trip adventures!

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Graduation Ceremony 2021

On May 25th, Felicity students, partners and staff were able to celebrate the recent 2020-2021 graduates for the biggest Felicity graduating class to date! We celebrated our two middle school graduates: Alicia and Nate. In addition, we celebrated our high school graduates: Marshell , Miranda, Elijah , Agnes and Mia. Our Felicity Principal, Dr. Dignam as well as one of the co-owners, Mr. Nekritz said a few words about our graduates, including positive memories associated individually with each student.

After the graduation ceremony, the Felicity school band, Edgeucation, played a cover of “Heart of Glass” by Blondie. Family members and loved ones were invited to attend a socially distanced lunch and celebration following the event.

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Back to Soul Harbour Ranch!

A few weeks ago, our Felicity students and staff had the opportunity to re-visit the Soul Harbour Ranch in Barrington. Soul Harbour Ranch is a therapeutic horse farm with miniature donkeys, miniature horses, full size horses, puppies and dogs.

Felicity students were gathered into groups of four to have the chance to learn grooming techniques and walking techniques for the miniature donkeys and miniature horses. Some of our Felicity students were reminded of last year’s experience with walking the horses and donkeys and others were able to enjoy this for the first time.

Unlike last year’s field trip, Felicity students were given the opportunity to get a tour of the horse stables and see two of the horses do some tricks such as smiling or making funny faces. Additionally, students were given a complimentary Soul Harbour Ranch baseball cap as well as a catered lunch from Panera Bread!

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Cooking Class

A majority of our Felicity students have been enjoying re-visiting cooking class as a part of additional elective credit and transferable life skills. Each of the students that are a part of our cooking class have completed an online Food Handlers Safety Course that can also be utilized as a marketable skill for future job opportunities in the food service industry. Additionally, Felicity School is looking to the Deerfield community to collaborate on potential restaurant partnerships, which may also benefit students in job training.

We are also working on being more inclusive and mindful of our students individual backgrounds with food such as culture, level of experience cooking, etc. Some of the foods that have been made so far in our cooking class are: jalapeño poppers, fried oreos, corn chowder, quesadillas and lasagna. Check out a few of our staff and students working with the cooking class below!

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Hands On Science Opportunities

One of the advantages of being in-person at Felicity School is having increased opportunities to work on hands on science projects that incorporate STEM learning objectives in order to increase student skill sets such as adaptability and transferable skills with different types of science.

Featured below are some of our recent science experiments that students have completed to encourage direct instruction such as make your own lava lamps, egg drop experiment, leaf pressing and learning about chick development:

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2020 Holidays At Felicity

2020 has definitely caused the Felicity team to think outside of the box regarding how we start a new tradition for this difficult year. During one of our staff meetings, we thought it would be best to surprise our students with some treats and a nice message from our staff to remind them that we are still here to virtually celebrate the holidays with them.

A few of our staff, Ms. Greenawalt, Mr. Farca and Mr. Mitchem volunteered as the Felicity drop off crew for our students to receive a surprise close to the holidays. The Felicity holiday gift package included a number of sweet treats and a Felicity logo glass. See a sample holiday gift package and our message to the students below!

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Mentoring at Felicity

One of Felicity’s part time clinical staff, Scott Gielow, has been working with a few of our paraprofessionals to start incorporating a weekly mentoring program with a few Felicity students. With Mr. Gielow’s extensive experience through agencies such as Allendale Association, Crossroads Counseling and Leyden Township Family Services, he is able to provide consistent support to our mentoring staff, Mr. Farca and Mr. Townsend to maintain guidelines for mentoring such as: academic goals, building social skills, developing new and healthy interests in and outside of school.

Scott also added the importance of mentoring for Felicity students by stating, “Mentoring is about building a connection with students- and to assist them identify and work on personal goals. These services take place outside of school hours, and on weekends- based on agreement with the mentor’s and students availability. Mentors create an individual plan with the student, based on that students interests and needs- but also in collaboration with parents and family, with family input being a vital component.”

In fact, one our mentored students who has been working with Mr. Townsend remotely over the past month for weekly Zoom calls has had his family notice some of the benefits during the mentoring sessions. This students grandma shared that her grandchild can “truly be himself for the two hour zoom calls with Mr. Townsend and looks up to him”. The family is hopeful for having the opportunity to incorporate in-person outings once it is safe to do so.

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Kahoot! and Getting Creative: A Non Traditional School Year

Our Felicity staff has been using a lot of trial and error to find unique ways to involve our students in new ways, both virtually and in person. With changes and adaptability being inevitable this school year, Felicity Staff has added virtual and in-person activities to help our students make the best of this school year.

Mr. Farca and Ms. Greenawalt took the reigns on getting our e-learning students more engaged with our in person students by using Kahoot!, an online quiz platform that has been more common with schools this year. Kahoot! has pre-loaded quizzes for common trivia topics or can customize quiz questions and make a fun competition for students and staff. Each week, we see more and more staff and student attendance, which has included creating some incentives as well as incorporating educational topics!

As the school year continues, we have found ways to adapt to creating outings such as having a sledding field trip to a local park, incorporating more group sports in P.E., a quilting project and reinstating weekly Athletico visits for soccer games. Additionally, as the weather improves and safety precautions remain in place, we have been able to re-introduce our outdoor classroom space. Please see some of our photos below!