What's Happenin' at Shaw Heights

Happy snowy Monday!  Even though this was a short week, gosh did it seem long!  (The kids agreed, too!)  We saw two big snow storms which made many kids stay home (lucky them!) but the kids who were here still had a great week!  And speaking of snow, HOLY COW.  So many kids gone today as well.  Lucky them...I sure would love to be on my couch watching a movie right now.  Anywho, back to last week: On Tuesday the kids thought about the goals they have for themselves and their future.  These goals could be academic, behavioral, far future goals, anything!  They then had to think about words that would get them to their goal like confidence, organization, and focus. After some brainstorming and working in pairs, each kiddo came up with a Word Goal for this semester.  It was great to see so many kids take time and put effort into choosing their word and coming up with action steps to achieve it.  We'll review these goals througho...

What a great week! Each class was on a slightly different page this week so there was a lot going on!  But on Monday, we were all able to have our first Mentor Monday of the new year and with all of our new mentors!  I had the former mentors share out advice for the new mentors on what it's like to mentor then we looked closely at four leadership quotes.  These quotes will guide their work as mentors this semester. The rest of the week was Speed Matching or Spaghetti Towers, Scholar vs. Student and new expectations for Tutoring which is now on Thursdays.  We ended the week with decorating our YESS t-shirts with sharpies and enjoying a snowy, chill day together.  The kids are looking forward to finding out their new mentee/mentor matches today!  Hope everyone had a great long weekend despite the Patriots once again winning the AFC Championship game.  Ugh...

This week was all about building our community back up and welcoming many new faces to each class!  A lot of mentor/mentee pairs are changing this semester too but so far good relationships are forming and some kids already know who they want to be paired with!  On Monday new expectations and introductions were made while a roll of toilet paper was passed around.  The kids chose between 1-10 pieces but had no idea why.  We then got into a circle and made introductions then the kids had to say one thing about themselves or their holiday break with each piece of toilet paper.  Some kids lucked out with 1 while others really had to think with 10.  It was a fun way to start the year.   Tuesday we played a fun game of Telestrations, it's like telephone only on paper!  Kids started by writing a sentence of their choice then handing it to the next person to draw a picture of their sentence.  After this the first sentence is hidden and...