What's Happenin' at Shaw Heights

Another great week in the books.  I start each day with a meme and Friday's meme really made the kids think!  Check out the photo...haha! Mentor Monday was spent sharing out homework (Who in your mentee's family are they closest to and why?) and successes.  Then the mentors played a game using only the letters of the class mentees' names to spell as many words as possible.  The winners won chips or fruit snacks!  They work so hard for food.  Haha. Tuesday was tutoring time and the kids caught up on work for parent teacher conferences that happened Wednesday and Thursday evening.  I saw over 55 families that night; it was so good to meet my kids' families and learn more about them at home! Wednesday was all about personal and professional stereotypes.  For personal stereotypes, in groups the kids looked at photos of common personas like 'teenagers, jocks, and nerds' then wrote typical stereotypes for each.  Each group rotated and ...

Another great week in the books AND the Broncos won!?  Woohoo! Mentor Monday was a great day of conversations between mentors.  We talked about mentor goals, our mentees favorite classes, successes and struggles.  The mentors offered advice to each other for what they struggled with this week.  Hopefully the mentors take the advice and use it next week! Tuesday was another successful day of tutoring.  The mentees are showing improvement in their grades and behavior in most of their classes thanks to the work of their mentors.  Race is our next topic in class so I took an approach to ease into it.  The topics of racism and race are big ideas so I wanted to start small with the kids and work our way up to that.  So stereotypes seemed to be a good starting place.  I introduced stereotypes by having the kids match words like "public transportation, hip hop, high-rise condos, and organic oatmeal" to four different characters.  Each chara...

Last week was great!  We did so many neat things together.   Monday was our first Mentor Monday!  The mentees hung out with Ms. Tiffany and I had the pleasure of spending time with my mentors.  We talked about their goals as mentors, the importance of mentoring, and gave me insight on what YESS was like last year.  We had a great time together and the mentees loved their Monday too! Tutoring Tuesday was a success and on Wednesday I taught Today I Choose... We talked about how things that are repeatedly told to us or that we tell ourselves, sticks with us both positive and negative things.  We all agreed that if we started each day on a positive note we may see changes in our mindset and our actions.  The kids filled circle maps with positive mindsets that they might like to choose to have each day.  Then on Thursday the kids made positive posters with their mentor/mentee to promote positivity within our classroom.  The posters look g...

This week was all about getting things done for YESS.  Monday the kids took a Social Emotional survey that they'l take again at the end of the year.  They might have moaned and groaned a bit, but afterwards they got to play games on the Chromebooks so they were just fine. =) Tutoring Tuesday was a success with CNN news writing and checking mentee's classes.  I also had the kids try a new way of communicating with their mentee during check-in; they had eight minutes to communicate ONLY through writing and facial expressions.  They had a GREAT time and most kids begged to do it again!     Wednesday and Thursday were spent discussing, planning, and designing something to go on a Shaw Heights YESS t-shirt.  Every kid submitted a design then each class voted on their top two favorites.  Today, the kids will vote on their favorite among all ten designs and we'll have two winners for the front and the back of the t-shirt.  Stay tuned for the ...

What a great week we had!  We started something new that the kids are really enjoying; the first five minutes of class is mentor/mentee check-in.  This is a time for the kids to build their relationship by talking to one another, catching up, checking in on goals, or simply playing a game of catch and having fun.  I'm loving how the kids are forming close bonds with each other. On Monday the kids looked closely at values they held high.  Most kids said family, loyalty, and career were their top values.  We discussed what these values looked like in their lives and how they saw them as shaping their behavior and beliefs. Tuesday was for tutoring, however, I added in a piece to help the kids become more aware of happenings around the world and our country.  The kids watched CNN10 and wrote three things they learned.  After that, mentors and mentees switched writing and gave one compliment and one suggestion about their writing.  I hope this hel...