Rehearsals are well underway for the ConVal Summer Academy production of "Legally Blonde, Jr." The musical follows Elle Woods whose life is turned upside down when her boyfriend Warner breaks up with her just before leaving for Harvard Law School. Determined to get him back, Elle ingeniously charms her way into the prestigious law school and, with the support of her friends Emmett and Paulette, begins to outsmart her peers, proving that good looks and serious books are not mutually exclusive. "Legally Blonde, Jr" features great songs and energetic dance numbers with a supporting cast of sorority sisters, law school students, hairdressers, and more. The production features members of the Class of 2024 as well as current students in ConVal High School, Great Brook School, and South Meadow School. The musical will be performed in the Lucy Hurlin Theatre on Thursday, August 1, at 6:00 pm and on Friday, August 2, at 2:00 pm (matinee) and 6:00 pm. For ticket information, please go to the online ticket site here.

One of the courses offered during ConVal's Summer Academy is a class in Personal Fitness/Yoga. In addition to comprehensive strength training and cardiorespiratory endurance activities, students learn yoga poses, breathing exercises, relaxation, and mindfulness techniques that allow them to strengthen, align, and balance the body, focus the mind, and soothe and recharge the nervous system. Instructor Gretchen Lima and students practice the warrior pose (Virabhadrasana) which increases flexibility in the hips, tones the legs and feet, and helps align the knee and ankle. Upon successful completion of the course, students will earn an elective Health and Wellness credit.

ConVal Summer Academy offers students the opportunity to participate in art classes, whether for enrichment or for high school elective credit. In Karrie Mitschmyer's ceramics course, students learned to use the pottery wheel this week. The pottery wheel is a fundamental tool used for shaping clay into various forms such as cups, bowls, and vases. It allows potters to create consistent and symmetrical forms quickly, though mastering its use requires practice and skill to control the clay effectively while it spins.

Registration for all fall sports—football, soccer, cross country, volleyball, field hockey, spirit team, and Unified—is now open. Make sure to sign into FinalForms, the district-wide replacement software for FamilyID, to create a parent or student account. The football pre-season starts on August 16 at ConVal High School, all other fall sports begin on August 19, 2024.

This week, the ConVal Summer Academy Spanish program was dedicated to food and food culture. It involved learning vocabulary and expressions that allow the students to communicate in the target language while cooking traditional Latin American and Spanish meals. To add an extra element of authenticity to the meals, all the foods were made from scratch with original ingredients.

Summer Academy at ConVal High School began on Monday with school administrators reviewing student schedules and directing them to their assigned classrooms.

In addition to credit recovery courses in English, Mathematics, and Social Studies, Summer Academy offers an array of enrichment and elective courses. These include classes in ceramics, 3D decorative art, a comedy workshop, personal fitness through yoga, a social studies course focusing on women leaders, as well as an introductory class to Spanish language and culture. Introduction to Theatre Arts will rehearse and perform "Legally Blonde, Jr," the program's ninth annual summer musical.