Nov 16th - 20th

Thanksgiving is approaching and the YESS students of Shaw did a week of reflection. On Monday the mentors looked at a women's immigration story. They learned how this women came to the United States to give her children opportunities she did not have in her home country. The mentors then discussed their personal family immigration story, weather it was their grandparents, parents or themselves. Students discussed  how they are thankful for their parents and grandparents' decision to come to the US. Students came to the realization that their success is their family's success.  This gave the YESS mentors motivation to succeed and to help their mentees succeed.

On Tuesday the students did a house building project called "Poverty and Wealth." The students where divided into three teams. One group was considered the wealthy group, another was the middle class group, and the last group was the poverty group. Each group was given different supplies according to their wealth.  The wealthy group had access to paint, a cardboard box, all supplies in the art cabinet. The middle class group had scissors, glue, and all scrap paper (which was a lot), markers, crayons, and colored pencils, and no brand new art supplies. The poverty group was given an envelope full of a handful of scraps, no glue, no scissors, and 5 crayons. All groups had a goal of creating a home.

In this project students could get more supplies, as long as the whole group decided on going to college. If they decided as a group to advance themselves through education they could earn more supplies to build their home.

Poverty

I was very amazed as I watched the students build their homes. Some students donated supplies to the poverty group as well as assisted the poverty group with ideas on building their home. On Wednesday the students did a group discussion on what they learned. Here are some of the students' responses:
"It wasn't fair seeing some students have more school supplies than others."

Middle class 

" Even though we were in poverty, we still built a better house than the middle class and wealthy group. This just shows that you can be successful no matter where you come from."
"Education can give you more opportunities, when we said we wanted a bachelors we got more supplies."

To finish up the week, the students made cards for people they are thankful for. Overall, this was another successful week at Shaw.

Wealthy