An Aloha Feeling, GiftEd Results
Students are paired with Aloha Foundation counselors as their tutors
We use the kinds of relationships we build at camp as the foundation for deep learning
We offer all forms of academic tutoring, test prep, and college application consulting for every kind of learner
Shouldn’t school feel a little bit more like camp?
Two organizations, one profound mission. We’re proud to be working with the Aloha Foundation to offer our tutoring and coaching services to all Aloha families.
GiftEd, inspired by the philosophy of the Aloha Foundation, was founded in 2017 with the belief that when a dedicated group of educators shifts their efforts to focus on the quality of their relationships with students and their families, powerful learning experiences take place. By using the best research available in the fields of relational pedagogy, individual and family counseling, and cognitive neuroscience, GiftEd seeks to create academic experiences that combine all of the skills and intuition of a seasoned teacher, the learning strategies informed by the most recent brain science, and the relationship and rapport-building approach found only at the Aloha camps.
In that way, GiftEd is unique from other private tutoring and test prep companies. Rather than focusing explicitly on results and building only transactional relationships with our customers, we focus on the process of learning, the process of feeling, and the importance of relationships at the heart of any transformative educational experience.
In short, we believe a GiftEd experience is an Aloha experience; both of our organizations place the central needs of children and families center stage in educational experiences that are equal parts head and heart.
Who are our Aloha foundation tutors?
Charlie Mayhew
Charlie studies History and Physics at Yale University, where he also conducts research at an Astrophysics lab looking for planets outside the solar system. Before that, he was a Cum Laude Society member, National Merit Scholar, and award-winning Classics student at Phillips Academy. He has been tutoring since high school, and loves taking an intuition-based, interdisciplinary approach — teaching students to be organized and precise in the humanities, and conceptual and creative in STEM. He has been both a camper and counselor with the Aloha Foundation, most recently running the Music department and teaching Campcraft at Lanakila. He believes deeply in the Aloha counseling philosophy and strives to incorporate the camp spirit into his lessons. In his spare time, he likes to cook, play piano, and perform improv comedy.
Skye Lee
Skye received a Masters in Education from the University of San Diego, with an emphasis in teaching and curriculum development. She is currently certified as an English and language Arts teacher in both California and Connecticut. Before teaching at a progressive public high school in San Diego, she worked at an independent residential school in Monterey, California. As an educator, Skye recognizes the importance of personalization in positive learning outcomes, and the power of curiosity and inquiry as a gateway to successful learning. Although she misses her role as the Head of Sailing at Aloha, her position in the main office allows her to connect with both campers and parents alike. You can find her making a mess with her kids and voraciously reading after taps.
Ana Lamoso
Ana has spent the past four summers as a camp counselor at Hive. There, she loved that she could focus the social and emotional development of girls ages seven-twelve; Particularly, she worked closely with twelve-year-old girls as a leader of the unit. There, she loves tapping into the goofy side of girls who are toeing the line between childhood and adolescence. Ana is a rising senior at Babson College in Wellesley Hills, MA, where she double majors in Operations Management and Environmental Sustainability. Babson has taught her how to empower others be leaders, and how to work well in groups. She hopes to pass these skills on to the students she has the opportunity to work with.
Yarrow Randall
Yarrow graduated with a degree in Environmental Science from American University in 2017. Although her job in Development and Alumni Relations does not directly relate to her degree, she values the inter-connectedness of everything and a passion for the pursuit of knowledge in her current work with the University of Pennsylvania’s School of Dental Medicine. She enjoys working with people and making connections, one of the things she loved the most about being a camper and a counselor with the Aloha Foundation. Her passion for learning and sharing knowledge actually started at camp, when she realized that the knowledge gained in the classroom could be used outside of the classroom in new and exciting ways. She enjoys the search for more and shares this joy for learning with her students.
Fia Sacerdote
Fia is an American Studies student at Brown University where she will matriculate at the Alpert Medical School as part of the eight year Program in Liberal Medical Education. Outside of the classroom, she plays for Disco Inferno, the women's ultimate frisbee team, conducts biostatistics research, and leads a medical humanities elective at the medical school. Before Brown, Fia was a valedictorian and National Merit Scholar at Hanover High School. Having tutored in a variety of subjects since high school, Fia is passionate about helping her students find connections across disciplines—her approach helps students identify and work on cross-disciplinary skills that need improvement, tapping into their inherent strengths to help them grow. She has been a camper at Hive and Aloha and most recently a counselor at Aloha, teaching and leading trips in the canoeing department. Fia attributes much of her academic success to her early exposure to the Aloha philosophy and to Aloha-based mentors, and is thrilled to pass these along to other Aloha families and kids.
Lauren Henzy
Lauren Henzy just finished up her 3rd year at the University of Vermont, where she studies biology with a minor in Anthropology. She appreciates the variety of electives UVM offers that have allowed her to explore genetics, cellular biology, ecology, evolution, and anatomy. Lauren has been learning French since age 12, with particular strengths in reading comprehension, grammar and writing. She is also well versed in many works of American and British literature thanks to her high school’s rigorous honors English program. Lauren spent four years as an Aloha camper and joined Hive’s staff in 2016. She has worked in both Archery and Canoeing, and loves to interject fun biology facts wherever she can. Lauren looks forward to adapting the teaching skills she developed at camp to her academic tutoring practice.
Erin Gerrity
Erin is currently working as a family therapist in Somerville, MA. She has her Masters in Social Work from the University of Pennsylvania and her Bachelor of Arts in Psychology from Hamilton College. She has worked in a variety of educational and clinical settings, and is passionate about helping students recognize their educational strengths and abilities. She has been tutoring with GiftEd Tutoring since 2018. Erin has been involved with the Aloha Foundation for over 15 years as a camper, counselor, and most recently, as the Program Director at Aloha.
Eliza Kissick
Eliza recently completed her senior year at Bates College, where she graduated with a degree in Rhetoric and Education. While at Bates, Eliza served as a peer writing tutor and partnered with the chair of the Rhetoric Department, who asked her to be the tutor for the major’s intro-level writing course. She also spent numerous hours working in the Lewiston school district, serving as a teaching intern in a high school English class and an elementary special education class. In the fall, Eliza will begin her job as an elementary school teacher in Brooklyn, New York. Eliza has been both a camper and counselor at the Aloha camps. For the past 3 summers, Eliza has served as a Unit Head at Aloha. She is deeply committed to Aloha’s mission and is eager to extend this mission to academics.
Michael Klisiwecz
Michael is currently studying Applied Math & Statistics as well as Computer Science at Johns Hopkins University. Outside the classroom, he volunteers for a youth mentorship program called Thread, which connects college students with children facing opportunity gaps in the Baltimore community. He has spent many summers as a part of the Aloha Foundation, and most recently was a tent counselor at Lanakila in the swimming department. He is incredibly excited to take the lessons he’s learned from camp and volunteering to create a deep connection that communicates his love of math. He hopes to foster an environment that makes learning an exciting prospect to look forward to each week.
Ben Smith
Ben currently teaches middle school math at Rodeph Sholom School in New York City. He started his teaching career as an elementary Science teacher in Menlo Park, California. Ben comes from a family of educators, and knew from a young age that he was passionate about the outdoors and education. As a student at the University of Massachusetts, he studied Biology and Education, and graduated with a Bachelors of Science. He has spent the past nine summers as a counselor at Camp Lanakila, where his love of learning has served him as a unit head and department head. He strives to bring the same joy to RSS, where he serves as a teacher, coach, and advisor.
Tommy Dickie
Tommy Dickie is a graduate of Dartmouth & Brown, and has tutored privately in New York and Los Angeles since 2006. Having been a Senior Associate & go-to Math tutor for CATES Tutoring in NYC, and having worked for Atelier Tutors in LA, he has now maintained private work for over 5 years. He loves to help middle & high schoolers reach a more comfortable relationship with math and physics by getting to know how each student’s mind works, and then finding creative ways to get that mind to open up to math and all its beauty. His decades-long experience working with kids and young counselors at Lanakila has enhanced his ability to establish the kind of rapport with a student that helps them find the fun in math together.
Henry DeRuff
Henry has taught for two years with Teach for America at a public middle school in Colorado Springs, where he teaches 7th and 8th grade English. While his focus is English, he has spent these two years working on building the relationships with students that form the backbone of any kind of learning. He believes that relationships precede learning and that, often, relationships are where the real learning happens. A discursive learner himself, Henry strives to teach his students to learn by inquiry and to model that himself. He first became interested in teaching as a counselor at Lanakila, discovering that one of the most rewarding and fulfilling things he could do was to help campers and peers face challenge and failure head-on, both in the Swimming department, in Woodside, and as a mentor for the second-year counselors-in-training. One-on-one teaching is where Henry is at his best. Outside of the classroom, Henry enjoys trail running, cycling, reading, writing, and spending time with his friends and family.
Blake Himes
Blake is a rising senior at Cornell University, majoring in Atmospheric Science with minors in Climate Change and Environmental and Resource Economics. Originally from Shaker Heights, Ohio, he has a passion for science, mathematics, and figuring out how the world works; he frequently finds himself staring up at the clouds and at the world around him in wonder. He values academic collaboration and believes in the importance of varied teaching strategies in education. Outside of class, he plays double bass in the Cornell Symphony Orchestra and sings in a co-ed a cappella group, The Chordials. He has been a camper and counselor at Lanakila since 2011, most recently working in Lakeside and as head of the Sailing department. He subscribes wholeheartedly to the Lanakila way of life and is excited to continue working with children this summer, even if it has to be virtually for the time being.
Maggie Latz
Maggie is currently a middle school science and reading teacher in the suburbs of Chicago. She has her Masters in Middle Grades Education with an endorsement in Science from National Louis University and a Bachelor's in Criminal Justice and Criminology from Loyola University Chicago. She creates lessons where her students experience real-world phenomenons and inquiry based learning to foster critical thinking. In her classroom, students focus on growth mindset and failure resiliency to achieve the high standards they set for themselves. She has been a counselor for the Aloha Foundation since 2014; she is currently the Department Head of Swimming for Hive. Success counseling is implemented into her classroom daily, ensuring that students create their own solutions when tasked with a challenge. In her free time, she likes to read in her hammock, hike with her dog, and have bonfires in her backyard with her family.
Eli Crippen
Eli is currently pursuing his bachelor’s degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering at Lafayette College. He is an EXCEL research scholar investigating applications of memristors in analog circuits. He has been tutoring and teaching others since his time at the Ethical Culture Fieldston School, where he co-founded an after-school program to teach the fundamentals of computer science to middle-schoolers. Most recently he has been volunteering with the YMCA to help tutor and care for elementary and middle school aged children from Easton, Pennsylvania. He has been both a camper and counselor at Lanakila, where he has worked in the Sailing department for the last four years. He strongly believes in the camp’s philosophies and their ability to provide an educational and transformation experience. In his free time, he enjoys technical theater, watching films, and playing Ultimate Frisbee.
Laura Bisbee-Slade
Laura is a senior at the University of Vermont where she is pursuing her degree in Religion and Political Science. She is on the pre-law track and is active in student life as a member of the student senate, Kappa Alpha Theta sorority, and an officer of College Panhellenic. She has a particular aptitude and love for math and all things logic; there’s nothing better than a good puzzle. Known at camp as Beewin, Laura is a long-time camper (Hive and Aloha), now Hive counselor. She was Hive’s Tennis and Landsports Department Head and this year’s Anti-Q Unit Head. She lives by the Aloha promise that we are all capable of doing hard things and looks forward to bringing her love of learning to campers. As she’s learned at Hive, Laura believes that there’s no problem that can’t be solved given the skills we have in our tool belts, the buddies that support and challenge us, and sometimes a little magic from the woodland fairies.
Audrey Himes
Audrey is a second-year student at The University of Virginia. She is planning on majoring in Economics, and is a current Echols Scholar in the College of Arts and Sciences. She attended Shaker Heights High School in Shaker Heights, Ohio, where she was both a National Merit Scholar and a recipient of numerous Classics-achievement awards. Audrey has been tutoring since high school, specifically focusing on building close relationships with her students, as well as helping to encourage a joy for learning and increasing understanding. Over eight years, Audrey has been connected to the Aloha Foundation as a camper and a counselor, most recently working in the Aloha Landsports department in 2018. She credits the Aloha Camps with teaching her how to grow from failure — the same kind of resilience and growth that she hopes to emphasize with her students.
Sophie Hatch
Sophie is currently a paraprofessional in grades 4-6 in the Therapeutic Learning Center (TLC) at a public elementary school in Brookline, MA. The TLC is a special education program that supports students at the academic, social, emotional, and behavioral levels. Over the past three years, Sophie has filled the roles of Associate Teacher, Long-Term Substitute, and Teaching Intern. One of Sophie's ambitions as a teacher is to foster lasting, trusting relationships with her students and incorporate their interests into lessons as a means to deepen student engagement. She has her Masters in Elementary Education with an endorsement in Sheltered English Immersion from Lesley University, and a Bachelor's in Art and Art History from St. Lawrence University. Sophie was a camper with the Aloha Foundation for 7 years and spent her 2014-2016 summers as a counselor at Aloha Hive; during her 2015 and 2016 summers, she was the Tennis Department Head and Assistant Unit Head in the Dolphin Unit. In her free time, Sophie enjoys running, baking, and playing the piano.
Alexis Hudes
Alexis is a recent graduate of Bates College where she studied Physics with a focus on its applications within Environmental Studies. At Bates she worked in a biophysics lab that analyzed images of cancer cells as well as at the tutoring center as a tutor in math, physics, computer science, and scientific writing. Further, she worked as a research assistant at a renewable energy research center looking at the potential for hydropower in the Phillipines. She is currently teaching at a small, independent elementary school in Western Massachusetts. She was introduced to the Aloha Foundation when her family started attending New Years Family camp in 2011, and has been involved since as a camper and counselor in various capacities, most recently as the head of the Exploring Department at Hive. Her favorite part of the exploring department is the way it embraces and encourages the natural curiosity of all of the campers (and counselors)! She holds this goal with her in her teaching, tutoring, and day to day life.
