Oaks Christian Online High School senior Summer Knapp has been studying abroad in Italy for her senior year and has now been accepted to John Cabot American University in Rome. The university has also offered to cover over 50% of her tuition on a Presidential Scholarship and other grants based on her essay about her passion for international travel and service. It’s appropriate that Summer would choose a university that’s named for John Cabot, the famous Italian navigator who explored North America for the British, as Summer has a passion for travel and has been to Haiti, Panama, Costa Rica, South Africa, Uganda and other countries. She also has three adopted siblings from Guatemala and Puerto Rico. She convinced the scholarship panel through her GPA and an essay and Skype interview that relayed those experiences. She says, “There is just so much going on in the world; I really want to see it all and make a difference.”

Sophomore, Christina McCoy, swam in three events over four days at the recent San Diego Presidents Day Senior Classic, held at San Diego State University. The invitational was a USA Swimming sanctioned event and drew teams from all over California. Christina swam in the 50 meter and 100 meter freestyle races, as well as the 100 meter butterfly race and her team garnered third place in this highly competitive event. This online high school sophomore has swum for clubs since second grade and has been with Class Aquatics club team out of Westlake Village, CA, for the last two years. Christina works with Coach Steve Reardon and specializes in sprinting at their training grounds on the campus of Oaks Christian School. “Our club is like a family,” Christina says.

Helen Kirkby will be travelling in February with her parents to Paris while completing her spring semester with Oaks Christian Online High School. Along with three honors courses, Helen is also taking Advanced Placement (AP) Art History, AP World History and AP English Language and will be completing her exams at the American School of Paris in May. Helen’s parents are Physics professors at the University of California, Irvine, and her father will be participating in research at the Saclay Nuclear Research Lab south of Paris. The family will be living near Versailles, and Helen hopes to make use of her busy but flexible study schedule to participate in the culture and take advantage of the once-in-a-lifetime experience. She even hopes to take her Tae Kwon Do skills as a junior black belt to a studio in her new city.

Marc Hedrick, a Junior at Oaks Christian Online High School, is part of the first class of students to team up with Coastline Community College to take an online course in Mandarin, Chinese. Coastline, in Costa Mesa, California, offers a unique distance education program, and OCO is partnering with the college to offer courses such as Mandarin to its online, high school students. Marc has already taken four years of Spanish and two years of Mandarin. He has been to Beijing, Shanghai and the rural Dong region of China and was fascinated by Chinese culture. He is also considering applying to the Engineering program at the University of Virginia and would like to have a business background as well. He sees how strong foreign language skills may help further his future goals.

Freshman, Daisy Ward, and her team came in first place in the Twenty-four Hours of Fury mountain bike race put on by TREK Bicycles and 4 Peaks Racing. The AZ DEVO , Junior U23, cycling development team raced around Arizona’s McDowell Mountain Regional Park, northeast of Phoenix, Arizona, from 10:00 am on November 3rd through the night until 10:00 am November 4th.

OCO's French teacher, Rachael Williams-Mejri has been hired for an overseas position in Dubai, within the United Arab Emirates. She will be teaching Ab Initio (or from the beginning) French for the first time and learning more about the French International Baccalaureate progam, which she can apply to her online teaching as well. She is also enjoying the local sites and culture. Some of her favorite adventures have been enjoying afternoon tea at the Burj Al Arab and Burj Khalifa hotels. “The Bufj Khalifa hotel is the tallest in the world and gives new meaning to the term high tea,” says Rachael, “It is just amazing to take in the architecture that doesn’t exist anywhere else in the world.“

OCO freshman, Jonathan Evans, is a shy and creative student whose family is anything but quiet. Jonathan’s parents, Sam and Russell Evans, founded the Planetshakers Christian Conferences in Australia. These conferences started in Adelaide with 300 delegates in 1997 and have grown to over 30,000 participants. Conferences in 2013 are scheduled for San Diego, California, in January and Melbourne, in April.