What's Happenin' at Shaw Heights

What a great week! Monday and Tuesday were our usual mentor meetings and tutoring time.   Wednesday we reviewed stereotypes by playing Kahoot!  The kids LOVED it and sure proved they learned a lot.  Winning teams earning food...go figure.  Haha.  The end of the game lead into a brief discussion about racism to aid in our conversation on Thursday. We did a Circle Talk on Thursday to discuss racial identity, culture, and racism in their lives.  Each period lead to extremely different conversations and outcomes, but it's evident that racism is real for my kids and affects them in many different ways.  I truly enjoyed these intimate conversations with my kids and loved that many of them were willing to share about this tough topic.  After each talk, I allowed the class to decide our next steps; let's either continue this conversation and dive into this topic further or move on to Unit 2, Relationships.  Stay tuned next week for what e...

Last week went super fast!  I was out on Monday to take care of my little one then Tuesday we did tutoring as usual.  This week the kids worked the hardest I've seen so far in tutoring; many kids turned in missing assignments, organized their binders, read books, or did Sudoku for fun!  My mentors also worked hard to help their mentees with their work as well. Since Halloween and Dia de los Muertos were this week, the kids watched Coco on Wednesday and Thursday.  I had them do two things while watching the movie; look for stereotypes and think about the theme/moral/message of the movie.  They really enjoyed kicking back, eating snacks, and watching the movie with the lights off.  Since we have no windows, it was like a real movie theater!  Haha.   Friday was a teacher workday so the kids got lucky with a three day weekend!  Here's to two more weeks until Thanksgiving break!  We can do it! =)