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Online Schooling Helps Teen Pursue Her Dream to Play Golf
Arcadia Weekly May 04, 2017
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Isabelle Olivas-Lowell practicing her swing on the golf course. – Courtesy photo / Mark Lowell
By May S. Ruiz
Isabelle Olivas-Lowell is a 13-year-old middle-schooler who plays a mean game of golf and is an outstanding volleyball server. Lest you think she’s all sports, Isabelle is also an avid photographer and an imaginative poet. And, by the way, her favorite subject is math and she’s gotten all A’s in her science course. She’s a smart, friendly and outgoing Brainiac – she’s all these contradictions – defying all manner of stereotype.
So how does someone like Isabelle balance the rigors of schoolwork and active engagement in the myriad of activities she enjoys without getting exhausted and stressed-out? For the Lowells, the answer is online home-schooling.
Mark Lowell, Isabelle’s dad and learning coach says, “Isabelle is deep into the volleyball season now. In fact, we’re traveling to Minneapolis next month for the finals. She’s also been getting ready for the summer set of tournament golf. She’s older now to advance to the AJGA (American Junior Golf Association), the larger realm of the golf world, where kids start to get recognized when they play larger tournaments. The problem is they’re played all over the country.”
“This is why online schooling makes so much sense for Isabelle,” Lowell explains. “It gives us the ability to be connected to the school anywhere we go as long as there’s an Internet connection.”
Playing golf is a constant in Isabelle’s life and becoming a professional golfer a singular dream. She has been on the golf course since she was five years old; she won her first tournament when she was seven. Her family moved from West Covina to Monrovia when she was in fifth grade and she attended Mayflower Elementary School. That was when athletic events clashed with class attendance.
Relates Lowell, “I would take Isabelle to golf tournaments so I always sent a note to school letting them know she’d miss a day or two and we’d need to get whatever schoolwork had to be completed. But I would receive letters in the mail; the last one that really got me upset was when they notified me that she had missed nine school days from August through May. But so what? She hadn’t been lagging academically; she had perfect grades.”
“From the golf tournaments Isabelle had been competing in, we met a couple of girls who were being home-schooled,” Lowell continues. “We thought that was an option down the road as she got busier with sports activities. Then one day I came home and she said, ‘I have two phone numbers of on-line schools for you’. One was in Newport Beach, but it was a school for students who got behind due to an illness, and so forth. It offers tutoring for kids to make up for missed classes so they could be mainstreamed to regular school instead of being held back a grade. The other was iQ Academy Los Angeles (iQLA) in Simi Valley, which was the right fit for a GATE (Gifted And Talented Education) student like her.”
Essentially Isabelle herself found the school and her dad was happy to make the phone call. The same week Lowell called iQLA they were able to finish all the required paperwork. The following week, all the books were delivered, and the computer was set up; she was enrolled. He took her out of Mayflower immediately after the first semester of fifth grade and started at iQLA. She’s now a seventh grader and quite happy where she’s at.
“I can download the curriculum and am able to see what I have to accomplish the entire semester so I can plan ahead,” Isabelle states. “I can schedule practices and figure out which tournaments I can attend. For instance, this morning I am reading about Nixon and the Watergate scandal and there will be a test on it later. This Friday I have to turn in my Science PowerPoint presentation on the California condor. In between those and daily classes I have to attend online, I can practice my golf swings at Santa Anita golf course.”
Just like regular school, Isabelle has seven graded classes – science, math, history, language arts, music, art, and P.E. – all in which she has earned A’s. She is also on the 13 Elite Team at the San Gabriel Elite Volleyball Club and is heading to Minneapolis in a month for the championship. Sometime before the end of the school year she will be taking the CAASPP (California Assessment of Student Performance and Progress) in Glendora.
One of the pitfalls of online schooling is the lack of social interaction among one’s peers. But this isn’t the case with Isabelle. She says, “I don’t feel like I’m missing out on some events because we have field trips just like regular school. In fact, we were just at the Aquarium of the Pacific with some other students from all over the L.A. area. I had the greatest time! That inspired my dad to get me an aquarium and now I have some fish in an aquarium in my bedroom.”
“If anything, I miss assisting my teachers,” Isabelle reveals. “When I was in kindergarten, while my classmates played outside I helped staple class packets. In second grade I was the teacher’s aide – I got to answer the phone when my teacher was busy. The dances I don’t miss; I’ve never been a girly-girl.”
The youngest of four siblings, Isabelle grew up in a family where almost everyone enjoys a sport. She says, “My maternal and paternal grandparents, my dad, and my uncles, are enthusiastic golfers. My older brother who’s built like a footballer played baseball, but he wasn’t that great – he had one hit in his entire career. But he’s very smart – he invented an alarm system and he can fix anything. If you tell him there’s something wrong with your computer he’ll be able to figure out how to make it work again. My eldest sister didn’t do sports, instead she was a color guard in band; she went to Le Cordon Bleu and is now a chef. My other sister played water polo in high school but she’s now into dance and attends Cal State Channel Islands.”
For all her kin’s affinity for athletics, Isabelle is the only one in her family who has shown a lively interest in professional sports. She continues, “All my brother and sisters went to private Catholic schools and pursued a college degree. I know that nowadays you have to go to college or you wouldn’t be able to find a job. But if I keep playing golf and become professional I might take the opportunity while it’s there, then go to college later.”
Lowell says, “Everyone’s different as my family proves. That’s why I’m an advocate of virtual schooling in spite of the stigma attached to it because it isn’t mainstream. But my daughter isn’t mainstream. Everyone’s unique and the problem is now we’re told we’re all the same – which isn’t true. She has two half-sisters and a half-brother, but not one of them is like the other. Online schooling is what works for us; you only have to look at the enviable feats Isabelle is able to accomplish, especially in golf, to appreciate that.”
Isabelle envisions herself in Scotland one day, on the iconic Old Course in St Andrews where the celebrated sport was first played. There she is at Road Hole, number 17, reputedly the toughest par 5 for women championship golf – her ball sailing over Road Hole Bunker. It bounces on the front of the green and takes a serpentine route, ending on its last roll into the center of the cup. Perfection itself.
