January 18th- 22nd

On January 18th, students from Shaw Heights Middle school represented YESS in Denver's Martin Luther King Marade. The Marade began at City Park and continued to the state capital. YESS students marched to honor Dr. King and raise community awareness of an issue they and their peers deal with daily - the school-to-prison pipeline. Many fellow marchers and community members spoke with the students about the pipeline and how to address it. It was exciting to hear students speak about the issue and carry signs they created with lines such as, "Let's prepare students for college, not prison", "Education is Power!", and "La Educacion es Poder!".

Shaw student Melissa shared, "I felt really happy marching and seeing people give me a thumbs up and taking pictures of my sign. It made me feel like I was teaching people and doing the right thing."

On Tuesday and Wednesday, students discussed ways they can manage anger, recognize when they are becoming angry, and how they can avoid situation that make them angry. 

On Thursday we had a team building day since classes were shortened to 30 minutes due to access testing. The students played a game called, "Want to buy my monkey?"  At first, students were embarrassed and didn't want to play. In the game, one student plays the part of the owner, and the other student is the monkey. The owner has to sell the monkey to another classmate.  In order to impress the potential buyer, the monkey has to make the potential owner laugh by either singing, dancing or other. It was great seeing how comfortable students were with one another. They were able to let go and be silly. By the end of the day students were asking if they could come back to the YESS classroom and play again! Overall, this was another successful week at Shaw.