January 11th- January 15th

This week students in the YESS Institute at Shaw Heights Middle School had another productive week. This week students focused on their listening and communication skills by doing an activity called, "back-to-back."  Students were given a picture and had to communicate to their mentor/mentee how to draw the picture they had, without saying what the picture is.  Students realized that they may need to improve on their listening skills, their communication skills, or both.

Students also talked about boundaries and did the Apple Pie Activity. In the activity students reflected on their relationships and decided if they are in a 50-50 relationship with friends, family, or their mentor/mentee, or if they are a "crumb eater" meaning that they don'put in enough effort. Some students learned that they are "hungry turkeys' meaning that they have most of the control in the relationship and they will end up feeling burnt out and resenting the other person. 

AE is now a mentor training class. In this class there are 6th graders who are on track to be mentors for the 2016-2017 school year. These students had three hours with me on Thursday because of ACCESS testing, In this class we talked about racial profiling, empathy, and listened to mentors about their experiences with mentoring.   

On Monday January 18th, a few YESS students will be marching in the MLK Marade. Pictures will be posted on the next blog.