Building Community

Welcome back! We spent the first full week of school working hard to build community in our YESS classes here at Shaw Heights. We got to know one another a bit better by doing team builders and working on general introductory exercises that allowed our mentors and mentees to share more about themselves. We also had a great time viewing the eclipse during our lunch on Monday, and had some time on Friday to play a few fun games to unwind.

Magaly works with Joshlyn as they interview one another.

One of the biggest accomplishments we made last week was setting several goals around attendance, school engagement, and community service. Each scholar was asked to set very detailed goals such as, "I plan to only miss up to 4 days of school this year," or, "I want to share out my opinions more in Ms. Baca's level 6 literacy class." For their community service goals our scholars were asked to consider how they could take the information they are learning in our YESS classes to others in our wider community who may need extra help and support. Many decided to reach out and work on relationships with people in their neighborhoods, on their buses and sports teams, and even within their own families.

Leslie, a first year mentor, shows off the letter that her old mentor, Stacey,
wrote her last year, which she now proudly keeps in her binder.

Not only did we set goals, we also did a fun interview activity where our scholars got to work with their face partners to ask some general questions. It was great to see our mentors and mentees interacting and asking each other things like, "When you feel a really BIG emotion, what kind of support do you want and need?" and, "What really stresses you out?" We have begun to build the foundation of a healthy class community by better understanding the emotions and needs of all of our scholars. 

Next week we will write our shared agreements and we will get to do one of our first art projects. Each scholar will be working on creating a coat of arms that expresses certain aspects of his or her identity. I am really looking forward to seeing how these turn out! We will also do one of the most beloved team builders--building "spaghetti marshmallow" towers. It is sure to be a great week!