On today’s episode of Eye on the Valley, Matt Watson welcomes in four guests for the first part of the show all from the Dream Up to Space Program, part of the iLead Exploration. In the studio, three of the guests are students, two in high school, Carter Sand and Grace Stumps, and one in eighth grade, Hutch Siegen, along with their program director of STEAM Initiatives and facilitator, Kathleen Fredette. 

The Dream Up to Space program started with only high school students but has now expanded to middle schoolers and elementary schoolers, including kindergarten. The students describe their various own individual experiences and all about their past experiments such as the germinating of certain plants and more. They conduct experiments for the NASA space station. Additionally, they will be mentoring the younger generation and teaching these younger students the basics they need to learn to effectively communicate virtually. In this particular iLead exploration, they communicate virtually so they need to know how to use emails and such. In fact, there are 5 different sites in the iLead programs, such as Lancaster, Agua Dolce, and more. Each site runs its programs differently, where the iLead Exploration is a virtual part of the home study program while others had the whole school work on that project, or only specific grades worked on them.

During a quick little recap, there was a settlement of what was heard during last week’s round trivia with Senator Scott Wilk, and it has come to the conclusion that it was most likely ended with a tie last week between the senator and Matt.

Afterward, it is the wonderful, Jennifer Shadle, who currently serves on the board, under arts, venues, and events divisions in economic development. Additionally, she is the administrator for a volunteer program as well. She is here to talk about future events they’ll have lined up for Santa Clarita. 

She describes many fun events including the Celebrate at the Canyon Country Community Center to celebrate other cultures within our universe which is ongoing starting from April to September. It brings the community together to learn about other cultures and allows people to be a part of it. Additionally, she mentions that the city of Santa Clarita has 2 sister cities, one in Philippines and one in Ecuador, and they may possibly get a new sister city in Japan that is right outside of Tokyo. For the next weekend, they have the Free to be Me to celebrate the differently abled which is held from 12 pm – 3 pm for the whole family, next Saturday, March 11.

On another exciting note, they have many festivals that will be coming back this year, most of which had to take a break due to COVID. One of the famous ones is the Cowboy Festival making its appearance in April which takes off right after the Senses Wild Wild West Party. Many different pages and webpages for all these events on the Santa-clarita.com/calendar.

Lastly, Big T has his five minutes of fame as he hosts trivia for “Frogger”, Jennifer, and Engineer Precious!

Listen to the entire show here to learn more about the Dream Up to Space’s program, projects, and experiences along with finding out the latest upcoming events for Santa Clarita with Jennifer!