December 8th- 12th CLOTHING DRIVE

This semester the students did a community project. The students wanted to do a project that would help children in need. They had so many great ideas and decided to do a clothing drive. I gave them contact information to a few places and it was their job to contact the organizations and to ask what we could do to help. A Precious Child was excited to work with the YESS mentors, and the YESS mentors liked how A Precious Child helped children in their community.

The students made announcements and went to the homeroom classes to promote the drive, and to inform the students of the clothing types and sizes we needed.

After two weeks of  the clothing drive the YESS mentors collects 535 items. The students were so excited with the outcome that they are already brainstorming a community project we could do next semester.

Over the past couple of weeks the students of talked about the importance of mentoring and why it is needed in a community. We have talked about serious subjects such as micro-aggressions, racism, the importance of inclusiveness  and this week the students were put into groups and had to brainstorm an ideal community. 

when the students presented their ideal communities they had to explain where mentoring would be needed. An idea most students stated in their presentations was that in every profession, a person who had been working in their line of work for 5-10 years would have to mentor someone who was in their first year of working in that field.

I am very happy with the communities that the students built in their groups. They really see the value of mentoring and think it should be everywhere! :) 

December 1st- December 5th

This week we began the clothing drive. The mentors of the program are in charge of tallying the academic enrichment classes on who is wining. The students are in charge of promoting the drive to the students, as well as keeping in contact with A Precious Child on the progress we have made. We have one more week of the clothing drive left.

This week we discussed accountability and what it means. We used some of the curriculum but I do not want to do any of the big lessons without their mentees present.

My mentors are beginning to get nervous because next month they will receive their mentees. We did a few scenarios and discussed way of handling the situations. The students are great and they brought up lessons we did a few weeks ago, such as the 5 stages of listening.

We finished up the week with doing a Self-Portrait activity. Students are more open about their home life than they were when we did the life time line at the beginning of this course.  The self portraits came out amazing. I have some amazing students in my class who have a lot to offer their mentees.