This week, the mentors and I spent a lot of time getting to know each other and I'm happily learning the intricacies of their personalities, as well as how their strengths will affect their individual experiences as mentors. Many of the students know each other from outside YESS, so they have come to YESS with pre-formed groups. Because I want all the mentors to be a team, we spent some time playing games like Catch Phrase and Apples to Apples, which is encouraging all the students to speak with each other in a light-hearted manner.
I also challenged the kids to work with people they didn't know very well to build bridges out of newspaper and masking tape. Their goal was to make a longer bridge than the other teams in the class, but with the added challenge of making it structurally strong enough to support a can of food. They had a blast completing this task and we all had some chuckles when testing the bridges' strength.
We also explored the concept of service learning, which combines philanthropy with self-reflection. The kids identified 33 unique problems affecting their community and voted on the most important issue, which turned out to be hunger. Soon, we will research charities to partner with and create an action plan to address hunger in our area. Check out the photo below to see all the dilemmas the students came up with.
I'm really excited for next week's activities, which include a discussion about Simon Sinek's Golden Circle (Click here to see his TED Talk) and creating inspirational messages to decorate the classroom.
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