Visitors’ Day is an annual summer event that gives community members the opportunity to meet our students and teaching fellows. Guests are able to learn more about our program during this event and see our six-week summer session in action.
This year’s Visitors’ Day was held on Tuesday, July 18th in the Performing Arts Center at St. Margaret’s Episcopal School. As guests began arriving, they were immediately greeted by our student leaders. The student leaders were our 7th, 8th, and 9th grade students who practiced how to properly greet and escort our guests to their seats.
Once our visitors entered the beautiful Performing Arts Center foyer, they were welcomed to enjoy a delicious breakfast catered by Jay’s Catering in Garden Grove. Guests sat with our students and teachers, got a deeper understanding of the students we serve, and even performed some of our Breakthrough cheers with us.
Our director, Victor Cota, gave a wonderful welcoming speech and introduced our speaker Coral Ramos, who is a current teaching fellow. Coral’s speech was powerful and moving. She spoke about her inspirational journey as a first generation student and how Breakthrough has helped her along the way.
During the next portion of our program, our visitors heard from two panels: a student panel and a teaching fellow panel. The panelists answered a series of questions about their experiences with Breakthrough, and brought several of our visitors to tears. It was an incredibly intimate moment for both our panelists and our visitors. Our summer theme “Power in me. Power in us” was truly apparent during the panels. Our students’ journey towards higher education proved that they are indeed powerful. Seeing dozens of community members show their support as our students became vulnerable proved that we are all more powerful together.
The final portion of our event was an opportunity for our guests to visit our classrooms. During the visits, guests were able to observe our teaching fellows in action and see how they interact with our students.
Thank you to all of our visitors who took time out of their day to get to know our students, teaching fellows, and program at a deeper level. We are grateful for the support of our community!