By Annie Dreyer
Actors and musicians are dripping with sweat in the sweltering heat of summer to construct stage sets for the Edinburgh Festival in Scotland. Cheerleaders blaring voices are chanting âGo! Fight! Wolverines!â
Students are lugging boxes with their names written in permanent marker on the side, filled with never-opened text books. They are carrying locker mates, and stuffing their lockers to full capacity, embellishing their lockers with pictures, mirrors and even wallpaper. The weight room is packed with toned football players, their muscles throbbing as they prepare for next season.
Though school is out for summer, the upper school campus is in session year-round.
Jay Pacheco, Assistant Plant Manager, has worked year-round at the school for nearly 29 years. This summer, he will fix lights, carpets and furniture in classrooms, as well as fix all lockers, in preparation for the upcoming school year. Kevin Giberson, Director of Inter-Campus Security, says that summer is a time for maintenance and plant projects.
Director of Summer Programs and middle school history teacher David Coombs also runs summer school throughout the months of June, July and August with over 500 students from around the world taking classes ranging from SAT preparation to Creative Writing.
Taylor Lasley â08 will spend her fourth consecutive summer at the upper school campus this year. She has practiced cheerleading, prepared for the Edinburgh Festival and taken part in the Summer Intensive Acting Workshop.
Lasley wakes up early some mornings to exercise with her friends, prior to the start of these programs.
âItâs always fun because the football team is on the field, and [Iâm] always seeing people,â she said. âYou definitely donât go your whole summer without seeing people from Harvard-Westlake.â
