Mentor Prepping & De-stressing!

Some great work from our 5th hour mentors.

It was another long week of testing at Shaw Heights this past week. I am so proud of the effort our scholars are making in trying to be rested, well fed, and ready each day for PARCC testing. We were glad to have a full day of classes on Monday in order to fully utilize our Mentor Monday time to prep for next year's mentors. Our current mentors have been charged with the responsibility of helping me conduct interviews for next year's candidates. The mentors had to come up with three different questions to ask the potential mentors; they will be taking turns interviewing today during our class time. I am excited to see how this process goes!

A great shot from last week showing just how hard a three-legged race can be!

We continued our week of de-stressing team builders and games while also squeezing in some time in the computer lab in order to further our research on our "college knowledge." Mentors helped mentees do some research on potential degrees, job growth, salary expectation, and potential problems that may keep one from enrolling in college. The mentors did a an excellent job supporting their mentees, especially after a long morning of testing!

Stacey will be receive her Adam's County Youth Initiative Award this Thursday- Go Stacey!!!

This week will be the final week of testing for our scholars and we will be glad to get back to work next week with our regular schedule. Quite a few of our mentees will be heading out on the annual Outdoor Ed trip this Wednesday- I am thrilled that our scholars get to participate in this amazing opportunity. One of our mentors, Stacey, will also receive her award from the Adam's County Youth Initiative. We are so proud of you, Stacey!

PARCC Testing & College Knowledge

Andres does a "trust fall" during 3rd hour.

This past week marked the start of PARCC state testing for our scholars at Shaw Heights. We had testing Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday (for select groups). Testing went from the first bell until about 11:30, which has made for quite the long week for our YESS mentors and mentees. We spent the short week discussing our new unit, "The Future," in the context of college. On Friday, our mentors lead class and conducted several team builders for the mentees.

5th hour waiting to start the "trust fall" activity.

So many of our scholars began getting stressed last week in lieu of the testing. Several even told me that they fell asleep during the test as they were so worried about it that they cannot even sleep well. We are trying to combat the high level of anxiety by doing team builders and by openly discussing how we are feeling and what habits we are incorporating into our routines.

Sabestian and Andres during the three-legged race.

Friday we had a day of fun with our mentors leading the mentees through exercises like the "trust fall" and "the human knot" (a game where everyone in a circle grabs someone else's hand and then the group must untangle the knot without letting go). We also hosted several three-legged races outside, and did a fun partner sketching activity. All in all, the mentees were thrilled for a day of excitement lead by their mentors.

Anthony and Quan play Twister during 6th hour after completing a worksheet last week.

Next week we continue testing and will delve further into our talks about colleges by getting into the computer lab to do a little research.

A New Unit & the YESS Video Shoot!

Ava was the first to be interviewed- she did wonderfully!

This past week we had the special honor of having several of our students, parents, and classes filmed for a new YESS video. The video, which will be shown at our annual "Road to Success" breakfast on April 26th, details the lives of our young YESS scholars and the ways in which the program has impacted their lives (and the lives of their families, too!). On Tuesday and Wednesday we had a camera crew set up in our classroom to capture what it is we do here every day. Our mentors and mentees were so excited and proud to share their experiences with the crew, and I was so impressed by their honesty and accountability as they told their stories on camera. A special thank you to all who were involved in this process--we cannot wait to see the final result!

Brenna was the last to be interviewed, and also did a fantastic job.

Last week we began a new unit entitled, "The Future." Many of our mentors are looking forward to the career planning component of this unit, and some of our mentees are already realizing changes they can make now to be more successful in the future. We started out by discussing the link between accountability and having a successful future--we agreed that it certainly would be hard to be successful if one cannot be accountable. In this vein of thought we started to discuss the nature of a habit, and how habits effect our success. We broke it down to better understand that habituation is a simple form of learning, and once a habit is learned it becomes "routine." Here is where it got interesting, however, as we learned that there are 5 essential habits one should possess in trying to become more successful. They are: getting exercise; making wise food choices; getting 8 hours of sleep each evening; surrounding one's self with positive people; and having healthy communication skills. While some of our scholars do some of these things, no one person could say that they do all 5. This knowledge of habits really seemed to stick with our scholars, and many have said to me in the days since how they plan to try and get more sleep, or eat breakfast each day, or how they plan to find friends who like to eat lunch (many of our scholars barely eat during lunch, and most do not make wise food choices).

 Sue Lee speaks about why she choose to move so that her daughter, Kiki, could be in YESS.

Last week we also did a simple assessment on learning styles so that our scholars can better understand which study habits are most in line with their personal method of processing. Whether auditory, visual, or kinesthetic, our scholars recognized the need to adopt new ways of learning so that they can get the most out of their brains (and their time!) when studying. Since our assessment, I have had visual learners ask to borrow highlighters, kinesthetic learners ask to take stretch breaks, and have had some of my more reserved auditory learners volunteer more in class discussions. I am happy to see that many have seized this information and are already putting it to work!

PARCC begins this week for us at Shaw Heights, which marks the beginning of a stressful few weeks for our scholars. We will be working on stress relievers and other tools to use during the next couple of weeks. We have also sent out our mentor applications for the 2017-2018 school year, and I am proud to say that almost every single person who can come back into the program would like to. It will be a very selective process to be accepted as a mentor this year as we have so much interest--stay tuned!