Welcome back to school, Shaw Heights YESS Scholars!

We are so excited to be back underway with the YESS program at Shaw Heights Middle School. So many of our scholars have returned to YESS for our third year of programming at Shaw Heights. How wonderful it is to see so much pride and ownership from our mentors!

Our year has started off with many team building exercises to help engage our new 6^th grade mentees and get the conversation going between our various grade levels. Many of our 6^th graders are still wondering what YESS is all about, but as each day passes, their smiles and excitement grow as they continue to see what a unique opportunity it is to be involved with YESS.

The most popular activity we have done thus far is the Marshmallow and Spaghetti Tower team builder. Scholars were paired up and were not allowed to speak to one another during this exercise. They could also only use one hand while attempting to build either the tallest, sturdiest, or most eccentric tower. While the marshmallows made this day a undoubtedly fun (and sticky!) one, the scholars were able to immediately identify some of the key points to this lesson: communication is important when working together, and often times we communicate with more than just the words we say, so we must pay attention to the various methods of communication; perseverance is essential when attempting something new, for you will almost certainly encounter set-backs and obstacles that may require you to re-evaluate your approach; and collaboration is crucial when working as a team, for you must be willing to give and take in order to function as one whole unit! They did a great job of wrapping us this team builder by sharing out what worked well, what didn’t, and how they could apply this lesson to working in class and with their mentor or mentee throughout the school year.

Our scholars have also been working on identifying their goals and values, which will be imperative to the work we do together this school year. We have spent a lot of time revisiting these two main topics- goals and values- so that each individual clearly knows what his or her goals are (both short and long term!) and what values are important to keep in mind as we all work toward attaining these various goals. Many of our mentors have really stepped up in showing our mentees what it means to set goals, and why it is so important to be able to identify one’s system of values.

I see so much pride amongst our YESS scholars, and I have witnessed our mentors carrying forth the YESS attitude of empowerment throughout the Shaw Heights halls and even beyond into our local community. We are looking forward to building our Time Capsules this week, along with designing our YESS t-shirts!