April 23rd - 27th

This was a big week for YESS, as we hosted our annual fundraising breakfast on Wednesday. Two SCMS scholars shared their stories and did a lovely job speaking in front of a large crowd. I was extremely proud of their work!

In the classroom, we practiced the steps to peaceful conflict resolution and worked on plans to work through a conflict outside YESS class. The kids are nearly always resistant to this lesson because it's hard to talk to someone about conflict, take accountability, and then accept consequences. Fortunately, most students were able to identify a way to apply this concept to their lives. The task this week will be getting them to follow through with resolving a conflict! Stay tuned!

In other news, we're nearly done with the recruitment process for our next batch of mentors! Also, we'll be hosting our annual End of Year Celebration at Ranum MS on Monday, May 7th. Families are welcome to attend this event and, of course, the kids are excited to be able to join forces with the other middle schools to celebrate their accomplishments!

April 16th - 20th

Gimme a "TEST"... Gimme an "ING"... What's that spell? One tough week for our kids. I was extremely proud of the percentage of students who said they tried their best and worked harder than they ever had before, but I could tell they were zapped by Friday. What's so amazing about YESS, however, is that we can provide opportunities for kids to process how they're feeling and work on some "art therapy." The kids reveled in the fact that they were able to come to room 101 and create something beautiful while also hitting a teamwork target for Empower.

On Friday, we continued the teamwork theme by playing team building games. The first was Sentence Makers, in which the team works together to create grammatically correct sentences that have a designated number of words. It was cool to see how creative they were with adjectives! Second, students played another team builder called Let's Make Squares. This is a game where each team member receives three strips of paper and they have to work with their team to create squares. Finally, we went to the small gym to play The Great Wind Blows. This is one of my favorite class builders (and the kids love it, too!).

April 2nd - 13th

Greetings! I'm sorry for the missed entry last week. There has been A LOT going on over here!

As always, we've been participating in Mentor/Mentee Mondays, as well as Tutoring Tuesdays. During our YESS lesson days, we've been studying accountability. My favorite visual for teaching this concept is the Accountability Ladder and it's always enjoyable to share stories of times students were on various levels of this metaphorical ladder.

Because of testing, we've been incorporating loads of Kagan structures and we've definitely reached the time of the year when scholars are dragging their feet. In one class, we hosted a restorative circle to amend our Shared Agreements and refocus our energies on learning as much as possible.

On the plus side, I have two students who will be speaking at our annual YESS Road to Success Breakfast, which will take place on April 25th. They're thrilled to be able to share their story of empowerment with the attendees and I couldn't be more proud of their progress!

March 19th - 23rd

We left for Spring Break with an uplifting project called 13 Reasons Why Not. The students created posters that highlighted thirteen people, places, and things they love. They really enjoyed being artistic and talking about all the reasons they enjoy being on Earth! Once they completed their posters, they were asked to write a PEAL paragraph about the most important item/person in their lives. This proved to be a difficult task for many scholars! It was intriguing to talk with them about the emotions that were coming up (mainly guilt) and ask, "Why do I feel this way? What am I afraid of?"