Anger, Aggression, and YESS t-shirts!

This past week in our YESS classes at Shaw Heights we delved further into our discussion on anger and even began learning about the various types of aggression. Our scholars did a great job with some group work centered around questions on peer aggression and they really enjoyed employing the method of "Sage and Scribe" during this activity (the sage shares out the ideas of the group and the scribe notes the opinions of all group members. We have been experimenting with different types of Kagan strategies such as this one and we have had really great results!). We also had a lot of excitement over the arrival of our YESS t-shirts for the 2016-2017 school year. The pride of our YESS mentors and mentees was apparent as I handed each a shirt last week. Many wore theirs on Friday and it was awesome to see the halls flooded with our YESS shirts and our YESS leaders. 

Our 4th hour YESS scholars with their new shirts!

The front of our YESS shirts.

We began our lesson this week by discussing anger in more detail. After completing a journal entry and sharing out our experiences with anger (how anger has often gotten "the best of us") we moved onto a worksheet entitled, "Getting to know your anger." The worksheet asked our scholars to first complete an "Anger Inventory" section to better understand which situations may anger an individual. There were multiple scenarios presented to our scholars who had to judge, on a scale from 1 to 5, just how angry that situation would hypothetically make them (5 being incredibly angry, or "Bomby,"as we understand anger in the context of our lessons last week on Emo Trolls). The first scenario states, "You overheard people joking about your family or friends." Many of our scholars ranked this as a 4 or 5, vocalizing that it is when they feel that a loved one has been the subject of ridicule that it is most difficult to control our anger. The worksheet also asked the scholars to evaluate what occurs when they are angry- the physical, emotional, and behavioral reactions that we feel as a result of becoming angry. Our YESS mentors and mentees love to do worksheets like this that provide insight as to how they think and function on a daily basis. 

After completing our work on anger, we transitioned into discussing the various types of aggression that exist. Our scholars did a wonderful job working in groups of four to answer questions such as:

What issues are you all dealing with in middle school?

What makes growing up in today's world hard?

What situations stress you out?

The back of our YESS shirts.

Once our groups finished working, the sage from each group spoke and shared out that group's ideas to the rest of the class. We had an incredibly honest, in depth conversation about the issues our scholars are facing and what, exactly, stresses each of them out. Finally, we finished our week by discussing relational aggression, which is a type of aggression specifically focused on destroying someone else's relationships. When our scholars learned about this form of peer aggression, they really connected to it, as they are all too familiar with this sort of aggression.

All in all, we had a wonderful week and are so excited to have our t-shirts! A big thanks to YESS and all those who made our awesome shirts possible!