The Swellesley Report

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Summer camp spotlight: Junior Golf Academy at Wellesley College

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Welcome to the Junior Golf Academy at Nehoiden Golf Club. At Nehoiden we are dedicated to Junior Golf and committed to bringing young players into the game. Our game-based curriculum is designed to encourage young kids to learn and develop skills using games and interactive exercises. We find that this approach allows kids to learn quickly, retain more, and most of all have fun learning the sport of golf. Weeks are filling up fast, so register now.

Once again, we will be offering our popular Summer Junior Golf Program which covers the fundamentals of basic rules and etiquette, and an overview of putting, chipping, pitching and bunker play. The goal is for Juniors to develop a full swing and learn the full array of short-game skills. Participants will get on-course, playing real golf holes throughout the week.

Our program aims to incorporate modules using golf to communicate valuable life skills: an understanding of sustainability, nutrition, physics of the swing, and bird/animal identification on the course.

The Junior Golf Academy at Nehoiden Golf Club is taught by the experienced Nehoiden Golf Club staff and is open to boys and girls ages 8 – 13. Beginners, intermediate and advanced players welcome.

 

Programs run in Monday – Friday sessions, 9am – noon, starting the week of June 24 through the week of August 19. The cost is $449/week, which includes equipment and snacks daily.

Weeks are filling up fast, so register now.

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Linden Square, Wellesley
EXPLO, Wellesley
Wellesley Hills Junior Women's Club

Wellesley Police to offer Citizen’s Police Academy this spring

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Interested in getting a better sense of how the Wellesley Police Department operates? Then the Citizen Police Academy might be for you.

What is the Citizen Police Academy?

It is designed to give citizens an overview of the police department’s functions and operational procedures.

How are the classes taught?

Via lectures, tours, demonstrations and hands-on practice.

What will the classes include?

The following topics and more:

  • E911 System & Dispatching
  • Motor Vehicle Law/Operating Under the Influence
  • Domestic Violence
  • Interview & Interrogation/Witness Identification
  • Narcotics Investigation
  • Computer/Internet Crimes
  • Criminal Law
  • Crime Prevention
  • Crime Scene Search/Evidence Processing
  • Defensive Equipment/Procedures

A ride along in a police cruiser with an officer is available for those who are interested after classes have been completed.

wellesley police wonderful weekend

When do classes start and where are they held?

The Citizen Police Academy is a 9-week program.

Classes will begin on Wednesday, March 20, 2019 and will end on Wednesday, May 22, 2019.  There will be no class on April 17th.

Classes will begin at 6:30 p.m. each week in the Kingsbury Room at the Wellesley Police Department.

Visit www.wellesleypolice.com or contact Lt. Marie Cleary or Officer Matt Wall at 781-235-1212 for more information.

Page Waterman, Wellesley
London Harness, Wellesley
Wellesley Lacrosse

Citizen Police Academy, worth it just for the ride in the cruiser

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Wellesley police stationThe Wellesley Police Department (WPD) will once again be offering their popular Citizen Police Academy this Fall. As requested by the WPD, we are delighted to share this opportunity with the COA community.

What is the Citizen Police Academy?
The citizen police academy is designed to give citizens an overview of the police department’s functions and operational procedures.

How are the classes taught?
Instruction is designed to be appealing to participants with a combination of lectures, tours, demonstrations and hands on practice.

What will the classes include?

Class will include the following topics and more:

  • E911 System & Dispatching
  • Motor Vehicle Law/Operating Under the Influence
  • Domestic Violence
  • Interview & Interrogation/Witness Identification
  • Narcotics Investigation
  • Computer/Internet Crimes
  • Criminal Law
  • Crime Prevention
  • Crime Scene Search/Evidence Processing
  • Defensive Equipment/Procedures

A ride along in a police cruiser with an officer is available for those who are interested after classes have been completed.

When do classes start and where are they held?

The Citizen Police Academy is a 9 week program.

Classes will begin on Wednesday, October 3, 2018 and will end on Wednesday, December 18, 2018.  There will be no class on October 31st or November 21st.

Classes will begin at 6:30 p.m. each week.

Classes will be held in the Kingsbury Room at the Wellesley Police Department.

Visit our website at www.wellesleypolice.com or contact Lt. Marie Cleary or Officer Matt Wall at 781-235-1212 for more information.

Please click here to view the application

Taste of Wellesley, Rotary Club

Without any sudden movements, sign up for Wellesley’s spring Police Academy class

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Wellesley police station

The Wellesley Police Department will offer a spring Citizen Police Academy starting on Wednesday, March 14, 6:30pm to 8:30pm.  Classes will run weekly on Wednesday nights until May 16.

The Citizen Police Academy is an outstanding opportunity for the public to learn about how the Wellesley Police Department operates as an organization in Wellesley and as a law enforcement agency. Each week Wellesley Police Department academy instructors will demonstrate a new and different aspect of the type of daily work that we do including:

Police Officer selection — How to become a police officer in Wellesley

Witness identification and interview/interrogation techniques

Traffic enforcement, including RADAR and LIDAR

Motor vehicle laws, including operating under the influence, breath tests and enforcement

Crime scene processing, evidence collection, and narcotics enforcement

…and many more!

All of the classes are taught by Wellesley Police officers, supervisors, and detectives. This is a chance to learn about the Wellesley Police Department and meet some of the many officers that protect the community on a daily basis.  Graduates of the Citizen Police Academy are all entitled to conduct a ride-along with a Wellesley Police Officer on the street.

To apply for the academy, please click HERE and fill out an application and return it to the department.  Previous academies have all filled up quickly.

Questions about the academy may be directed to Lieutenant Marie Cleary MCleary@wellesleyma.gov or Officer Matt Wall MWall@Wellesleyma.gov.  Applications can be dropped off, mailed, faxed or scanned.

Deland, Gibson, Wellesley

Wellesley teen entrepreneur looks to kickstart a return to cloth diapers

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PandaBaby

Being in the diaper business can be a dirty job, but Wellesley High School Senior Sierra Levanto wants to do it.

With her 9-month-old business called PandaBaby, this budding entrepreneur is on a mission to sell moms and dads on using a brand new sort of cloth diaper that she hopes will help address “the mind-blowing waste of disposable diapers.” She pledges that her colorful baby essentials will be efficient to use (machine washable and comfortable to wear) and relatively easy on the wallet (4 sizes, 3 themes, $35-$40 in packs of 6).

“So, yes, the last thing new parents need is extra laundry,” Levanto says. “But what their kids need and their kids’ kids need is for us to be more aware and impactful towards our dent in our planet.”

The 17-year-old has been buying and selling diapers to date in small quantities, but now has lined up a manufacturing partner to crank up production. First, however, she needs to get her startup funded, and today she has launched a PandaBaby Kickstarter crowdfunding campaign (see embedded video below) through which she is attempting to raise $46K over a stretch of 30 days. As with other Kickstarter campaigns, investors receive rewards depending on how much they put in.

Sierra Levanto, Wellesley High
Sierra Levanto: “In January I began creating designs and my own homemade prototypes for these diapers just as a fun extracurricular activity.”

So, why in the world is this teenager, whose other interests include golfing for Wellesley High’s varsity team, diving into the diaper game?

Levanto describes herself as “a business devotee” and has taken inspiration from both of her parents, who are commercial real estate brokers. She cites her dad’s decision to break off from the corporate structure after 33 years and form his own firm as particularly motivating.

Not only has Levanto worked numerous jobs, from babysitting (where she became aware of the disposable diaper conundrum) to camp counseling to sales for a local massage outfit, but she has gobbled up any business classes available to her. At Wellesley High she has taken Business & Entrepreneurship, Advertising & Marketing, and Retail, among others. “Wellesley’s business offerings are exceptional…I do not think I would have discovered my passion for business until much later on, maybe in college, if it wasn’t for these classes,” she says.

Levanto was nominated for the Harvard Summer Business Academy, which she took part in this past summer, and won the Most Innovative Pitch award.

As for PandaBaby and where Levanto’s sole proprietorship got its name, she says that’s probably the least interesting part of this story, though explains it is the product of extensive research she conducted and involves associations with conservation/environmentalism. And there I was thinking maybe she had lined up new National Zoo panda baby Bei Bei as an early client…

Rick Cram, leader

JrCode Academy comes to Wellesley

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10712916_324446364411093_5152114185143286487_nWhen a couple of Wellesley moms wanted to expose their fifth-grade daughters to computer coding, they went online and did an intro to coding class together. Their kids loved it and came home after school every day eager to do more. When they finished the online class, moms Ruth Keyes and Nicole Zajec searched for a community class in the surrounding area that could take their daughters’ programming skills to the next level, but couldn’t find anything that fit. So they decided to create JrCode Academy.

To get JrCode Academy up and running, Keyes and Zajec first managed to secure a classroom at the Wellesley Community Center, then found Computer Science students from Olin College and Wellesley College to help teach the class with the goal of introducing kids to a life-long love of computer languages. With the classroom ready, the teachers on board, and a philosophy in place, they sent out an email to a small network of like-minded parents to gauge interest. Twelve hours after that first email went out, they had a full classroom roster and had to start a waiting list.

From that initial roster of fifth-graders, JrCode Academy has grown to offer about a dozen classes for rank beginners to intermediate programmers. Classes for kindergarten – 1st grade get kids to understand the basics of coding by teaching them to program their own computer-based stories and games while they learn to solve problems and express themselves creatively on the computer.

2nd – 5th graders can take the Introduction to Computer Programming class, which is geared toward students who want to learn the basics of computer programming through interactive stories, games, and animations. The goal of the collaborative and fun class is to generate interest in computer programming as they grow up in a technology-driven world.

Intermediate students up to 8th grade learn more comprehensive programming skills and are introduced to concepts such as functions, conditional statements (if/then), and using data with variables. Also designed to be fun and interactive, the class will start to build foundational programming skills as students progress to more sophisticated programming platforms such as Object Oriented Java.

Classes are $250 – $300 for 7 weeks, and the next session begins in early March.

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New soccer academy brings tiki-taka style to Wellesley

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We’ve received word that a new soccer academy for kids ages 5-17 is arriving in Wellesley this summer to host a couple of weeks of camp at MassBay Community College in July. The twist here is that the Atletico Soccer Academy camp organizers specialize in teaching kids the tiki-taka style of soccer (short passes, movement) popular with some of the well-known Spanish teams, including the national team.

“This style of soccer has not caught on in the USA as of yet only because this type of soccer training usually starts at a young age to be perfected, it concentrates on maintaining possession of the ball through constant accurate short passes and dribbles,while in the US they concentrate on long passes and crosses, which is why the American national soccer team players are averaging 6 feet in height, because strength and  speed are required for their style of play,” says Rilwan Lawal, from the outfit.

Lawal says the camp has not been in touch with Wellesley United Soccer and has not run such a camp before, but that the organizers are experienced coaches and players who want to pass along their knowledge to kids.