Summer Splash Forecast: Brace for a Rainstorm!
Senior Gifts, Rainstorm, Teacher award, and so much more!
Hello Splashers! Happy summer, and hope your Splash events went well. As we wave goodbye to the previous year of splashing, let's recap this past year's highlights and share some exciting summer updates!
✅ tl;dr: LU-wide announcements
🎓To all the senior admin team members who graduated over the last year, we would like to show our appreciation for your hard work with a small gift! Please fill out the following form and we will be in touch!
⛈️We are also announcing the return of Rainstorm on July 26, 2025! For more information on Rainstorm and to sign up to teach, please visit here. Please sign up to teach before June 30th, at 11:59pm PDT!
🏅We would also like to congratulate Elias Leventhal as the first-ever LU Pedagogy Awardee! Read below to learn about him and his teaching style!
🚕LU’s own Paola Milbank also had a chance to visit Northeastern’s Splash program this Spring and shared some of her thoughts below!
📨We are also offering learningu.org email address to each chapter! Please reach out to zoe@learningu.org if you would like to register one for your chapter!
Stick around for some website updates and a sneak peek at a new theme for the Splash website!
🕵️ We need YOU! 🫵 Recruitment alert!
Join LU! Tell us about your interests here or reach out to us at info@learningu.org.
The web team is currently looking for a web development intern. Check out the flyer later in the newsletter!
🤖 Resources and communication
Check out these classroom resources that can help you design a super engaging class! Also, here’s a self-guided lesson planning worksheet.
Check out the LU handbook and Website documentation on Github.
📢 Tell us your experiences! Spread the news!
Fill out this short survey to share your teaching experiences—a cool class you have taught or seen, your secret teaching tactic, or golden moments of learning you witnessed!
Have any news, tips, or comments to share? Email us stories to be featured on our next newsletter or send us feedback.
Get one new member on your team to subscribe to this awesome-possum newsletter to receive (roughly) bimonthly posts.
⛈️A Storm is Brewing…
We are happy to announce that Rainstorm returns on July 26, 2025, and we need YOUR help!
For those new to LU and Splash, Rainstorm was a program held by LU during the pandemic to provide students with access to an online Splash. This effort is made possible through collaboration with Splash teachers and volunteers nationwide. While most in-person Splashes have made a recovery since the pandemic, we want to revive Rainstorm to provide a similar experience to students who have limited access to in-person programs.
For more information on Rainstorm, please visit here.
We are currently recruiting teachers here. Please sign up before June 30th, at 11:59 pm PDT!
If you are unable to teach but still wish to help run the program, please reach out at rainstorm@learningu.org
🏅Learning Unlimited’s Pedagogy Award!
Introducing the first-ever Learning Unlimited pedagogy awardee for being an outstanding Splash Teacher: Elias Leventhal
PAOLA MILBANK — Elias is a rising sophomore at Yale, originally from Vermont. He studies physics and data science and plans to become a scientist focused on renewable energy and energy storage technologies, but he is also passionate about creative writing. He teaches both subjects – and more – for Yale’s Splash and Sprout programs, serving a range of grades in both. Outside of physics, his hobbies overlap heavily with the subjects of his Splash classes: such as pure math, creative writing, and the ancient Chinese game of Go.
Interested in Splash after attending Berkeley’s online program as a student, Elias seeks to bring new topics to a middle school and high school audience who may not otherwise learn about such areas until college. Creative writing, for example, was one of Elias’ favorite subjects in high school, which is not often offered in typical school courses. Though Elias had tutored before, Splash at Yale felt like a “fresh start” for him to explore curriculum and pedagogy, and he drew from his experience with his favorite professors. He emphasized targeting plans to different grade levels: high school students – who may be more comfortable with storytelling – focus well with free-writing time and peer feedback, while middle school students make use of prompts and exercises to focus and enhance their skills. For both, he emphasizes continuous writing to build up his students’ word flow. Ultimately, after teaching a few classes and reflecting on his lesson plans, Elias found that his ideal teaching style is one that adapts closely to students’ needs and interests. This skill is developed through practice, carefully watching his students during independent work times, reading their work as they write, and tracking who shares their work aloud. His advice to prospective Splash teachers? Students already see you as a professor, so remain confident in your abilities to teach – it’s okay if you don’t know the answer to every single question.
Elias has also graciously shared his creative writing lesson outline with us, and notes that he prefers a chalkboard to slides as it slows his pace to bolster his students’ understanding. Thank you, Elias, for your amazing work!
🚗News from the Road
UChicago had a successful year of Splashes thanks to all the hardworking admins and volunteers who made it happen!
Princeton also had a roaring success of a Splash Program!🐯
Cornell’s Splash entered their Tie-Dye Era!
Our very own Paola Milbank also had the opportunity to visit Northeastern University Splash during their spring program! She has the following thoughts to share with us:
PAOLA MILBANK — I visited Northeastern’s Splash program on Saturday, March 29 for 8th through 12th grade students. The program had around 70 students, a wide variety of classes, and an incredibly dedicated administration. Here were some of my highlights:
Attention to details: the admin team checks in on teachers at least once every class, ensuring they don’t need anything else, like more end-of-class teacher surveys. During lunch, three rooms with different activities: bracelet-making, painting, and sitting quietly. This was a great way to keep students entertained during lunch and meet their specific preferences!
Teachers: Northeastern had a great variety of classes with teachers that were clearly caring, thoughtful, and excited to be there. It was great to witness teachers help out with running the program and reviewing their student feedback. One class that I particularly loved taught students about botany and let them (and me) plant herbs – this was a great, interactive way to keep students engaged and excited.
Leadership: Caitlin’s hard work and care for the program is palpable – and really inspiring to witness. She is seriously impressive, and a great and natural leader.
Resilience: The program runs on limited funding, yet remains free of charge for students to attend. Finding a way to make this balance happen isn’t always easy, but Northeastern does it well! Also, when Papa John’s was late to the scheduled delivery time, the admin and some teachers worked together to quickly pivot and calmly reorganize the lunch period structure to keep the day running smoothly.
I had a wonderful time at Northeastern’s Splash! Thank you so much to the admin team and teachers for being so welcoming and letting me check your program out!
🛹 News from the Board
Introducing LU Working Groups!
LU will also be hosting working groups over the Summer! These are collaborative groups aimed at strengthening not only your upcoming Splashes but also at developing new skills and reflecting on your programs. Below, we have included a description of each group’s goals. To learn more or sign up, please visit this link. If you have any further questions, please contact zoe@learningu.org.
Student Recruitment Working Group: We will work to expand the reach of your program and craft a recruitment list to use for your upcoming recruitment cycle.
Teacher Training Workshop Group: Learn and brainstorm ways to support your chapter’s teachers without adding a burden onto your admin team.
Web Team Internship: Join the LU web team to support chapters nationwide and use your skills to improve the design and user experience of the website!
Experience in UI/UX design or previous coding experience is preferred
Conversations in Education Journal Club: Join a space to discuss changes in the educational landscape and how new changes connect to and impact future Splash programs.
My Splash Experience JournalING Club: Learn how to present your Splash experience on resumes, personal statements, and interviews.
Please fill out the interest/sign-up form here, and the facilitator of each group will reach out over the next few weeks!
🖥️ Web Updates from the Wizards of the Web! (Will, Katherine, and Miles)
💧For the first time in 9 years, we are adding a new theme to our roster! We are including a beta version of this theme, called "droplets", in an upcoming patch release with the full release coming later this summer! For this theme, we focused on having a more modern feel, increased customizability, and more efficient screen usage on mobile and desktop devices.
🌐The new theme is built with Bootstrap to increase responsiveness and the “modern feel.”
🧗Droplets has been built from the ground up to be mobile friendly and we will continue to improve that aspect through subsequent releases.
🔎We will also be rolling out partial redesigns of the dashboard, main management page, main onsite page, and many other pages that will affect all the themes.
✍️Droplets will introduce new customizability options in font sizes, header/footer colors and visibility, dropdown menu colors, and navigation/contact info.
🤖The upcoming patch also has a robots.txt file to prevent bots, improved error messages in custom forms, and other minor improvements!
Reach out to us on #web-support on Slack or email websupport@learningu.org with any questions, bug reports, or feature suggestions.
🖱️Come and Join the Web Team!
Thanks for reading Learning Unlimited’s Newsletter! See you again soon!