Personal Values

Damien works to "Find Someone Who" shares one of his personal values in 7th hour.

Hard at work filling out planners during our Tutoring Tuesday.

We had a wonderful week in YESS as we further discussed our "roots" by talking more specifically about our values and morals. Our mentors did a great job guiding these discussions and I can really tell they are feeling strong about their identity and values. The mentees are a little bit more confused as we talk about things like, "altruism," and, "autonomy." We took a couple of days to work through our lesson on personal values so that each scholar really understood what he or she values and why. We even "Kagan-ized" the lesson by playing the game, "Find Someone Who..." Once we had all worked through our check-lists, indicating what is "very," "somewhat," and, "not" important to us, we then had to find someone who shared the exact same value as us (I always love getting to join in with our scholars when we do these activities!). In fact, we all had to find TEN people who shared the same values as us.

This acivity was a wonderful way to get our scholars interacting and I could see how they enjoyed the process as they better understood their classmates after we finished this exercise. We also employed the Kagan structure, "Think-Write-RoundRobin," where our scholars worked in groups of four to answer several questions regarding their personal values. They had to first share out their answer (number one asked them to identify their top three most important values, and they also had to tell why they picked these values); once they finished sharing, they then recorded their answer and the next person went. I really valued the way our scholars took the time to listen to one another. I was able to walk around the room and ask someone at a table to name another classmate's top value and they were all able to do so with ease.

Unwinding in 7th hour on Thursday after finishing our Personal Values lesson.

We were very lucky to host Dr. Diane Bassett in our classroom last week. Our YESS scholars are always overjoyed when we have a visitor, and I am very proud of our 4th hour class and the work they showed Dr. Bassett during her stay. I feel very fortunate to have Dr. Bassett's expertise this year as she will be my instructional coach. Cheers to the first of many productive visits!

Next week we will finally do our "Speed Matching" lesson where our mentors get matched with mentees. We will also vote for our class Presidents. Finally, on October 2nd we will have our first, "Mentor Monday." Stay tuned!

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.

Time Capsule!

This past week we did perhaps one of our most exciting lessons as our scholars worked on a time capsule packet and letter to themselves. This exercise is always fondly recalled by previous mentors and mentees as they love reading these packets and letters during the last week of school. This exercise gives so much perspective on just how much one can grow in less than ten months. Before we began writing our letters, we completed a two page worksheet that really got our scholars thinking about their current likes and how they are feeling this week. They were asked to name several of their current likes--from favorite food and drink to their favorite songs and movies. They then worked on writing strong sentences about topics such as "what they are looking forward to right now" in addition to setting three goals (these included both personal and academic aspects). 

4th hour did an excellent job with their letters! 

Once they all had this information recorded we moved on to writing a draft of our letters in our journals. This allowed for each to really work on grammar and syntax so that their letters read smoothly and are easily enjoyed. I could really see a lot of frustration as we worked through this process, though it was quickly followed by pride as each realized what a detailed letter they had before them.

Drafting our letters for the time capsule.

On Friday we finished up our letters and and sealed them into folders which we placed into our "time capsule." I am already looking forward to the day when we open them all--for I too did a time capsule and am quite excited to read my letter come May.  :) 

We also did our first "Tutoring Tuesday" this past week, a day where we work with our YESS scholars to ensure they are caught up and even working ahead in their classes. This year at Shaw we have a Weekly Reflection Log that each scholar is expected to fill out every Tuesday; this document is a hard copy that they must fill out and state what they learned in each class in addition to any absences or issues with behavior they might have had; parents are expected to sign these logs every Tuesday evening.

Our YESS scholars worked hard to ensure their planners are up-to-date so that they are able to fill out this log correctly--I am proud of their efforts and I know how difficult it can be to become accustomed to filling out a planner every day. They did an excellent job! 

Very proud of the time and effort our scholars put into this exercise! 

Next week we will have our Presidential Elections--stay tuned for more news! 

Coat of Arms & Code of Conduct

Our amazing Coat of Arms! 

Having lunch on my birthday with a few mentors. 

This past week in YESS we got to work on one of our first art projects by designing a Coat of Arms. This project is tied to our Unit 1 goals of becoming effective communicators and being able to tell others about our personal goals and values as we work to build a sense of community in YESS. The worksheet asked each scholar to provide information on what they are good at now, what they would like to improve (we had to be very specific!), their most valued material and non-material possessions, their hopes for their education and career goals, and three words that they felt best described who they are.

We took a full day to make sure the information was very clear and precise; for instance, instead of saying that one would like to improve "math skills," I urged our scholars to instead write things like, "multiplying fractions" and "understanding place value when adding and subtracting decimals." By the second day everyone was very excited about their Coat of Arms and we began adding detail to make it a 3-D project.

A 2nd year mentor's project- so much detail! 

Tuesday was my birthday and I felt so much love and appreciation from all of our mentors and mentees. I had lunch with a couple of my guy mentors from 4th hour, and even had a student from last year return to give me flowers and Skittles! It was a wonderful way to celebrate. 

A great project from a 6th grade mentee.

On Wednesday we wrapped up the projects and did a gallery walk and short presentation. Afterwards we displayed each one in our room so that every single YESS scholar is represented. This also gives all of our scholars a chance to look and understand the different people who are in our program.

Gabe did a great job on his Coat of Arms project.

Thursday was a very important day as we finally set our classroom code of conduct by writing up a working document that we all signed. We are going to display them this week (we had a few scholars out who will need to sign it this week!).

We ended our week by working on our planners and general organization on Friday. We are doing Weekly Reflection logs this year at Shaw and it is my intention that every single YESS scholar has a working planner. Once we finished we had about 15 minutes to unwind and play a few games together.

It was a great week and next week we are really looking forward to hosting our presidential elections!

Building Community

Welcome back! We spent the first full week of school working hard to build community in our YESS classes here at Shaw Heights. We got to know one another a bit better by doing team builders and working on general introductory exercises that allowed our mentors and mentees to share more about themselves. We also had a great time viewing the eclipse during our lunch on Monday, and had some time on Friday to play a few fun games to unwind.

Magaly works with Joshlyn as they interview one another.

One of the biggest accomplishments we made last week was setting several goals around attendance, school engagement, and community service. Each scholar was asked to set very detailed goals such as, "I plan to only miss up to 4 days of school this year," or, "I want to share out my opinions more in Ms. Baca's level 6 literacy class." For their community service goals our scholars were asked to consider how they could take the information they are learning in our YESS classes to others in our wider community who may need extra help and support. Many decided to reach out and work on relationships with people in their neighborhoods, on their buses and sports teams, and even within their own families.

Leslie, a first year mentor, shows off the letter that her old mentor, Stacey,
wrote her last year, which she now proudly keeps in her binder.

Not only did we set goals, we also did a fun interview activity where our scholars got to work with their face partners to ask some general questions. It was great to see our mentors and mentees interacting and asking each other things like, "When you feel a really BIG emotion, what kind of support do you want and need?" and, "What really stresses you out?" We have begun to build the foundation of a healthy class community by better understanding the emotions and needs of all of our scholars. 

Next week we will write our shared agreements and we will get to do one of our first art projects. Each scholar will be working on creating a coat of arms that expresses certain aspects of his or her identity. I am really looking forward to seeing how these turn out! We will also do one of the most beloved team builders--building "spaghetti marshmallow" towers. It is sure to be a great week! 

Back to School!

Destiny is ready to mentor this year! 

3rd hour enjoying some time outside on Friday.

Welcome back! We have returned to Shaw Heights for the 2017-2018 school year and we could not be more excited for the year ahead. We had so many former mentees who have come back this year to serve as mentors and I know we have such a strong group of leaders ready to help out! I have had countless students come by my room to ask if they can join YESS and I am so grateful to our amazing counselors as they work to schedule everyone we possible can into YESS.

A wonderful answer from one of our 2nd year mentors! 

Ivan worked with several others to build an impressive Jenga domino line!

Our first week back was a week for us to connect as a class and to begin forming a sense of community. We showed the YESS video to the new mentees, shared artwork and stories from last year, and did some fun team builders and games to get people up and moving and interacting with one another. On Thursday we did our first lesson on introductions and the importance of understanding one's self in order to set up healthy relationships. Our scholars got to know more about one another as they worked on a "Let Me Introduce Myself" worksheet. I was shocked to find out one of our new scholars has been skydiving, and another is a competitive gamer! We also have a new scholar from the Philippines who is so excited to be in YESS.

Outside with 4th hour on Friday.

Our room is set and ready, and next week we will begin working on some of our first art projects, such as our Coat of Arms. We are working with a new curriculum this year and have so many awesome new lessons on things like the teenage brain and drugs. Stay tuned as we begin our new school year together!

June Catch-up: Working at the office!

It has been quite the busy month here at the YESS office as we all have been hard at work on our new curriculum and have attended several informative trainings. I have been working with the rest of our middle school team- Sara, from Scott Carpenter, and Joe, from Ranum- to adapt the lessons of our new YESS curriculum for our students this fall. We are so excited about all the additional information and lessons, which include a unit on the brain and a unit on drugs. There are several cool new projects, including one on identity and masks, and even some new lessons and projects for our mentors. We have worked hard to ensure these lessons are inclusive and fun for our mentors and mentees and we are all eager to get back to our classrooms with these great new plans!

Sara works to adapt lessons in the new curriculum.

Joe grabs a sit at the potluck after filling his plate.

We have also had the benefit of attending multiple trainings this month while at the YESS office. Dr. Karen Timmons hosted a great training on trauma and PTSD and the various ways in which we can help those who are suffering from trauma. Dr. Jerry Yager also came to speak to us about trauma, and we learned a lot about the brain and how trauma affects adolescents. Both trainings on trauma were excellent and provided us with a ton of new information that we can use to better serve our students. We also had Mary Haniwell in to speak to us about non-profits and the various components necessary for a nonprofit to succeed. Becky Kelleman, who is joining the YESS team to help with data, provided two trainings and spoke to us about the ways in which YESS collects data on our students and what sort of changes we will be making going forward in order to better assess the success of our programs. Finally, we had two of our amazing board members, Nancy Maguire and Diane Bassett, who provided trainings on Love & Logic (a book that we all use as one of our main teaching resources and on which Nancy happens to be an expert), transparency at YESS, and a guided evaluation of the new curriculum (with Diane's expertise leading the way). These trainings have been invaluable to our continued professional development at YESS and we are very grateful for all those who took the time to come and speak with us this month.

Emily and Mariah dish out the awesome food at our potluck.

Though we have been hard at work, we have certainly squeezed in some fun and (lots) of laughter. YESS provided several lunches and a delicious breakfast during the month, and all the staff came together for a very tasty potluck lunch. Joe, Sara and I were glad to have so much time together to work as a team to strengthen our programs and our understanding of the new curriculum. We will break for the month of July though I know we are all eager to greet our students come August!

Joe, Sara and I at the YESS office.

Joe, Sara and I strike a silly pose in the style of our students! 

Wishing you a wonderful summer on behalf of the YESS middle school program mangers!