Presidential Elections

Ricky gives his speech during 6th hour.

This past week in YESS we finished up our time capsule letters, got to work on understanding our planners, and we hosted our annual class presidential elections. We also had a sub in early in the week, who had a blast doing the alphabet game with our mentors and mentees (this is a great team builder where our scholars work in groups to spell out letters with their bodies). I am very impressed with the letters our scholars wrote this year and I know how excited they all are to open them come the end of the year!

Breann did a phenomenal job with her presidential speech! 

One of the major requirements in YESS this year is to have a planner in which our mentors and mentees document every hour of every day they are here at school. This is so challenging for many of our scholars, and so we have taken time on our "Tutoring Tuesday" to ensure every single scholar is filling out his or her planner correctly. By Friday every single YESS scholar had a fully filled out planner and now they all feel very ready to fill out their "Weekly Binder Response" log next week. These go out in our Academic Enrichment class every Tuesday morning and each scholar states what they did in each class all week long (in addition to comments on absences and behavior). They must get the log signed and then they bring it back to their Academic Enrichment teacher. In YESS we are working hard to make sure that even our 6th grade mentees are capable and confident as they work through this process.

Breann did a phenomenal job with her presidential speech!

We also hosted our presidential elections last week, which was very exciting. Every single scholar was required to write an election speech (whether or not they actually intended to run for office!). They each had to speak to one strength and one weakness while also mentioning one way they could help others. Almost everyone was feeling anxious, and yet everyone did such a wonderful job reading their speeches. We have many candidates in each hour, and this week we will cast our votes (we are waiting on a few absent scholars to give their speeches before we move on to the voting stage).

This week we will be talking more about our personal values and we will be doing our "speed matching" lesson, where mentors and mentees interview one another and finally get "matched" up! It is sure to be an exciting week.