Churchill Elementary students thank our generous donors and volunteers for their tremendous support!

With the generous support of the Glen Ellyn community, more than $94,000 was raised from individual donors this fall through our Giving Tuesday and End-of-Year campaigns! This was about a 36 percent increase compared to the end-of-year funds raised the previous year. The number of new and total donors also increased from 2022 to 2023. We are grateful for our dedicated supporters and are excited to welcome our new donors to the GECRC community!

Looking ahead into 2024, GECRC anticipates continued growth in the number of students and families we serve after launching our new site at Park View Elementary School in District 89. GECRC has continued implementing the social and emotional learning (SEL) curriculum, the Character Effect, after seeing positive growth from students in 2023.

GECRC has additionally partnered with District 41 to assist with their High Impact Tutoring (HIT) initiative to support students who show the greatest achievement gaps in learning. GECRC-designated HIT tutors have worked with students to supplement the literacy curriculum. Finally, GECRC hopes to increase our community partnerships to provide students and families with additional enrichment opportunities!

Churchill students were all smiles with Churchill Elementary Program Coordinator Karla Kampen at the annual Thanksgiving celebration this past November! Please enjoy more photos from the Churchill, Lincoln and Park View Thanksgiving celebrations below; a tremendous thank you to the Glen Ellyn Lions Club for making each celebration possible.

The Glen Ellyn Lions Club supplied and helped serve food at the first GECRC Thanksgiving celebration at Park View, and we look forward to making it an annual event! Students and their families enjoyed turkey, sides and desserts. Thank you to our staff and board members for volunteering and donating goodies.

We are so thankful for all of our wonderful volunteers, community partners and board members who made our annual Churchill Thanksgiving celebration possible! An extra special thank you to the Glen Ellyn Lions Club who not only donated delicious turkey legs to our feast, but also stayed to help serve food to our Churchill students and their families, and donated a generous check to GECRC.

Lincoln students celebrated an early Thanksgiving with piping hot pizza generously donated and delivered by the Glen Ellyn Lions Club, as well as with delicious personal pumpkin pies and harvest bars baked by our very own GECRC Board President Celia Rodee.

Lincoln program coordinator Cheryl Sammer was beaming with pride as some of our past and present GECRC students performed in the Lincoln Elementary production of 'Frozen Jr.'

This October, Lincoln students had a very special visitor named Cody, who is a trained therapy dog. Cody belongs to owners Michael and Susan Cardamone who were kind enough to share their sweet dog with our students; they absolutely adored him!

Our Park View program coordinator Lizzy Doty enjoyed the CCCD89 5th grade winter band concert with some of our Park View students and their families!

Playing "Uno" is a huge favorite for Hadley students when they are done with their homework for the day. Students and tutors organized an impromptu Uno tournament one afternoon this fall.

Winter Holiday Celebrations

Hadley students celebrated the holiday season with snow globe decorating and hot chocolate. They also received books with a “don’t judge a book by its cover” theme, with a description of the book on the outside of the wrapping paper.

At Churchill, students worked on the The Character Effect SEL lesson on "hope," and colored festive winter hat drawings while participating in Churchill's "fancy" spirit dress-up day.

Glen Crest students also enjoyed hot chocolate and a "don't judge a book by its cover" gift at their holiday celebration. And... candy canes!

Thank you so much to our wonderful community partner The Morton Arboretum for hosting our staff and board this year for a festive holiday gathering! We enjoyed the incredible Illuminations exhibit; it is always so creative and breathtaking! What a great way to kick off the holidays!

Welcome, New GECRC Staff!

Daniela Heupel is one of our new classroom coordinators at Churchill. Daniela graduated from Lake Forest College with a degree in Psychology, and was recently admitted to the School Psychology MEd/EdS program at Loyola University Chicago. We are thrilled to have you on our team, Daniela!

John McMahon is one of our new teacher aides at Lincoln. John graduated from Glenbard South in 2019 and graduated from Butler University this past May, where he played on the baseball team and double-majored in Economics and Spanish Welcome, John! We are so happy to have you!

Congratulations to our Volunteer of the Month, Mr. John Walker, who recently celebrated 500 (!!!) hours of service to GECRC!

John began volunteering with GECRC in October 2016 after he retired earlier that year. This was coincidentally the same year GECRC opened the Churchill site. After John's third year of tutoring at Churchill, some of the students who were graduating to Hadley Junior High asked if he could possibly follow them there. At that point, John split his time between the two locations. This year, John has signed on as a high impact tutor, volunteering at Churchill three days a week and Hadley one day a week. John says it is gratifying to witness when students "have been working on something for a while, and all of the sudden something clicks."

When tutoring is done for the day, Mr. Walker enjoys playing Uno and chess with the students.

"We are so appreciative of John and the incredible tutor student relationships he has built over the years," says GECRC Executive Director Leah Harding. "We have witnessed students he has tutored go on to be successful at the middle school and high school levels, and we know that is because he helped to build a foundation of academic knowledge and confidence in those students."

Thank you, John! We appreciate you so much!

2022-2023 Annual Report

GECRC would like to thank Garry and Debra Vaccaro of Warm Coats For Cool Kids who donated new coats for some of our students! We would also like to thank the D41 Kids Foundation Winter Outerwear Program for donating boots, snowpants, hats and gloves, and the Kiwanis Club of Glen Ellyn for donating to the cost of some of the coats as well as volunteering to distribute them. We are so fortunate to have such generous community partners!

It was an honor to welcome

U.S. Rep. Sean Casten to our Churchill program! GECRC students were given the wonderful opportunity to take part in Q&A with Mr. Casten. They were well prepared with some great questions about caring for our planet, the life of a Congressman, and even Mr. Casten’s love of science! Members of the Board and GECRC Staff were able to discuss with Mr. Casten our successful programming, amazing students, and long history. Thank you, Mr. Casten, for taking time out of your busy schedule to pay us a visit, and for your support and interest in GECRC!

Get Your Tickets for the Literary Event Today!

We are thrilled to announce that tickets are now on sale for our annual Literary Event on April 18.

“We are delighted to welcome Mary Beth Keane, author of 'The Half Moon,' as our guest at the 2024 Literary Event,” says Janis Pfister, GECRC Board Member and Literary Event Chair.

Keane is also the author of 'The Walking People,' 'Fever,' and 'Ask Again, Yes,' which spent eight weeks on the New York Times Best Seller List. 'The Half Moon,' her fourth novel, was released in hardcover in May 2023, and will be released in paperback April 2, 2024.

Tickets are $80 and can be purchased online now at or in person at The Bookstore of Glen Ellyn at 475 N. Main St.

The annual literary event is held in partnership with The Bookstore of Glen Ellyn with generous support from Glen Ellyn Bank & Trust.

All proceeds will benefit GECRC. Don't delay -the literary event sold out last year. Reserve your tickets today!

Thank you so much to The Bookstore of Glen Ellyn for donating some fun games for our students, as well as for curating and collecting the Spanish language books purchased by many of our kind and generous donors when we requested some titles earlier in the school year. We are so fortunate to have such tremendous support from our community!

If you missed our original request and would like to purchase some Spanish language books for our students, please order them from the Bookstore.

These Spanish language books are wonderful for our Spanish speaking students and are also great reading for our English speaking students who are learning Spanish.

If you order from The Bookstore, their staff will collect your purchase for GECRC, and our staff will pick it up. Thank you for your support of both GECRC and the Bookstore, an invaluable downtown Glen Ellyn business!

Thank you to the following organizations who recently donated to support our five after school programs, either financially through grants or donations, or through in-kind donations. We are very appreciative of your support of GECRC!

Grants:

George Travers Foundation

Fred J Brunner Foundation

DuPage Foundation for awarding our organization through their Community Needs Grant Program as a pass-through gift from Betty W. Smykal.

In-Kind and Community Organization Donations:

Mary Albright

Lisa Blake

Kathy Cabral

Gail Dixon

Megan Lowrie

Leslie Scott

Jennifer Timpanaro

Carrie Wisniewski