Emotion Sculptures & Leadership

"Anger" from our 3rd period 

This past week in YESS we got into another awesome 3-D art project with our scholars. In keeping with our recent discussions on Emo Trolls, Hot Buttons, and anger, we talked more this past week about emotions and moods (and how they differ). We noted that while an emotion tends to be triggered by an event or action, moods are bit more difficult to pin down.They tend to be longer lasting than emotions, and often we wake to find we are in a "weird mood" or a "great mood" for no apparent reason. We also discussed how emotions can affect our moods, and how to better understand when this is happening so that we can better control our moods.

Cora and Jade's project on "Joy"

7th hour scholars hard at work

3rd period crafting their vision of "Anger," an emotion many scholars picked for their project

Once we began discussing core emotions, our scholars got to pick from a list of emotions for their project. Each mentor/mentee pair is allowed to pick whichever emotion they connect with most. The list included: Love, Joy, Surprise/Wonder, Anger, Sadness, Fear, Jealousy, Shame/Guilt, Disgust, Confusion, and Anxiety, Many of our scholars asked to do two different emotions as they wanted to compare and contrast ones such as joy and anger, or sadness and love. It has been so interesting to witness which emotions our scholars choose and how they decide to bring that emotion to life with cardboard, colored paper, glitter, feathers, pipe cleaners, and glue. These projects are the culmination of our unit entitled, "Problem-Solving."

Two mentees show off a project on "Love"

6th period working on their Emotion Sculpture

This past week we also got further into our talks on leadership with our mentors. We watched a video on Malala Yousafazai and her and her father's efforts to provide access to education for women in Pakistan. Many of our scholars were already familiar with her story, so we were able to have a very in-depth conversation about her life and her work in education. In relation to our talk on Malala we spoke about what education looks like in other countries around the world. So many mentors stated how grateful they felt to be able to go to school here in America.

Next week we will talk more about leadership in the context of Cesar Chavez and how he became a labor organizer in order to campaign for the rights of workers here in America by adopting an approach of non-violence. We will be starting a new unit on "Accountability," too- stay tuned!