Carmel Mountain Ranch, locally referred to as “Carmel Mountain” or “CMR” is a suburban community northeast of the urban heart of San Diego. Consisting of charming homes, subdivisions, and community parks, Carmel Mountain is a friendly neighborhood—a sort of bedroom community for the city of San Diego. One of its many subdivisions, Fairway Village, is locally known for embodying a sense of community pride every Christmas.
Fairway Village, located in the heart of Carmel Mountain, is a neighborhood that coordinates across eighty-plus homes every year to decorate for Christmas. Residences present an annual Christmas light display show called “Holiday Magic at Fairway Village.” From December first through January first, the community goes all-out with Christmas decorations, lights, music, and block parties celebrating the holiday season. Visitors can drive slowly through the cul-de-sacs, or get out and walk, enjoying the mild winter air and the dazzling lights. Each year on the Saturday before Christmas, the neighborhood holds a large block party that is open to the public, with karaoke Christmas songs, hot cocoa, and Christmas cookies available for visitors. This event has been featured in several San Diego Family magazine articles, as well as local newspaper stories that report the best Christmas light displays to visit year by year.
Fairway Village is known for its community pride beyond Christmas, however, and even has its own webpage dedicated to educating visitors about the neighborhood in Carmel Mountain, as well as resources for residents or soon to-be residents about the holiday traditions, local schools, parks, and other important information about living in this special neighborhood. Neighbors know each other, help each other, and work together to keep Fairway Village a tight-knit neighborhood year-round. For this reason, it is perhaps one of the most recognized and locally known communities in Carmel Mountain, as well as the broader county of San Diego.
Tutors in Carmel Mountain are participants in this sense of community, even if they do not reside in Fairway Village. Tutors recognize that working together and as a team is a vital component to academic success; collaborative learning is an effective way to retain information, as well as progress in a given subject. Struggling students in Carmel Mountain can feel secure in the efforts and collaborative support that tutors offer them to turn bad grades around and regain self-confidence in their studies. The guidance of a tutor is nothing to be embarrassed of, just as relying on a neighbor’s help to string Christmas lights from a palm tree to a roofline is nothing to be embarrassed of either.