The Accolade

Last Senior Internship class to be offered at Sunny Hills includes student’s experience working for Anaheim manufacturing company

Senior Phillip Kim is shown hot gluing wires to headlights for commercial vehicles and airport signals under a fan to speed up the drying process. Image used with permission from Phillip Kim.

May 28, 2020

Accolade staff writer Aaliyah Magana contributed to this story. Heading into the 2019-2020 school year, senior Philip Kim wanted to bulk up his college resume. He signed up for an elective, Senior Internship, which requires him to find a business to obtain some after school work experience. Kim...

After 31 years in education, AVID and business teacher Lori Larsen retires to pursue dream of fixing up house in South Carolina

Lori Larsen is the only Sunny Hills teacher who will retire at the end of the 2019-2020 school year next week. Larsen was instrumental in setting up on campus the Advancement Via Individual Determination program, which started in 2006.

Lira Jeong

May 19, 2020

For 14 years, Lori Larsen has encouraged her students to pursue their dreams of getting admitted into a four-year college through the Advancement Via Individual Determination [AVID] program. And after the spring semester is over, Larsen has decided to follow her own dreams -- retiring as a teacher a...

Sunny Hills AVID Senior Standout gets top scholarship prize of $25,000 from virtual Orange County Department of Education awards ceremony

Senior Dana Mabin holds up the email she received April 7 from the Orange County Community Foundation notifying her of the $25,000 scholarship she received from a county AVID awards ceremony, which was canceled and turned into a virtual slide presentation ceremony because of the COVID-19 pandemic. According to the email, Mabin will be given $6,250 through a scholarship check which will be mailed directly to her educational institution to help cover each year’s college tuition up to four years total.

Andrew Park

April 21, 2020

In the midst of the coronavirus crisis with several senior-related events canceled or drastically changed, Dana Mabin received some good news from the Orange County Department of Education [OCDE]. This year’s Advancement Via Individual Determination [AVID] Senior Standout was awarded a $25,000 ...

Meet this year’s Sunny Hills AVID Senior Standout: Dana Mabin

Senior Dana Mabin holds up the certificate she received back in November for being this school year's AVID Senior Standout. Mabin will be recognized April 20 at the University of California at Irvine's Barclay Theater. That’s also the same day when she’ll find out whether she will be awarded up to $24,000 for the Orange County AVID scholarship and up to $2,500 for the AVID Orange County Dollars scholarship. Image used with permission from Lori Larsen.

Andrew Park

January 21, 2020

“Hard-working, driven, determined, ambitious and focused.” Those are the words from an staff email that Lori Larsen, the district’s coordinator of the Advancement Via Individual Determination [AVID] program, used to describe senior Dana Mabin, who was selected as the Sunny Hills AVID Senior...