April Update

It's been a month that seems like "The Groundhog" has taken over, and the same day keeps happening. The students of SCMS have disappeared into a virtual no man's land, but, alas, a series of messages and assignments from the kids have broken through! Further proof of the students' existence is the black zoom screens with names like 3fivear2 I see when we play Kahoot on Friday's. AIrS5698 won a gift card this Friday, congrats to whoever that is?!

This month we have explored: what we love to do through a creativity challenge, worked on how to focus, and plan a daily schedule when going to school online. This week we are practicing mindfulness exercises to help us focus, calm, and regulate our emotions. We will continue to connect through memes about COVID and emails like, "I hope everyone has enough toilet paper!' and 'Hey, I see you have turned in a blank assignment was that on purpose?" We will continue to support each other on our class google slide where students can update each other, using pre-set questions, about how they are doing. 

January Update

Let me use this opportunity to catch you up on all the wonderful things our students have been up to here at Scott. This month we continued to talk about relationships in our lives. It takes a lot for our students to get past giggling whenever I say the word "relationship," but when we finally get past that, magic. We explored our individual sphere of influence once more, talked about dating relationships, and our relationships with our parents and friends. Then we moved into emotions and have been really working to understand and recognize why we are feeling the way we do. We finished the month out by choosing words of affirmation and understanding that our mindset dictates how we see and interact in the world.

This month I would like to recognize a mentee named Kye Bailey. He was a mentee last year and was incredibly shy throughout the entire year. He has faced some significant roadblocks this year and I am incredibly proud of his progress working through it all. He is able to recognize when he needs breaks, communicate with me his needs throughout the class, has a very positive attitude, and is trying hard to do his work.

I would also like to recognize Luis Campuzano Gutierrez as a powerful and positive mentor. He not only works well with any mentee, but he is also like the mentor for the entire class. He is the first to speak up to help other students get back on track, he is always warm and kind, and constantly contributes to group discussions. His positivity spreads throughout the classroom on a daily basis.

November at Scott

November felt like it blew by in our YESS classroom because we have been having so much fun! First, the fun stuff! One of our Mentors, Andres, made a video in his broadcasting class that helped the school win a contest over the radio. The school then did a canned food drive and the radio station came out to the school and we had a big dance party! We also had a "Quincebrero" for one of our students on fun Friday. This had been a running joke in the class for a couple weeks because a student had mispoke Quinceanera, so the students in Period 2 spent about 2 weeks planning this party, made invitations, brought cupcakes and drinks, and had all the traditional dances. Can you guess who's Quincebrero it was?

This month we finished our Culture and Identity unit by talking about power and privilege. We did some fun active games to demonstrate power which the kids really enjoyed. Then in the first activity to talk about the privilege we had an auction. Students were broken into groups, all given different amounts of money, and then a list of privileges they had to buy. The auction was fun as they fought over privileges and either wasted all their money on one or were left empty-handed with money at the end. The discussion after the auction was by far my favorite as some students were incredibly angry to start out with the least amount of money and the connections the students made to real life. Then we did an activity called "walk the line" where a statement was read out loud and students had to cross the line if they felt comfortable saying the statement applied to them. Some questions were tough, some brought up some really deep feelings, and some were very empowering for students. But again, the debrief after was where the magic happened. We talked about how privileges can look different, for example, being able to participate in a cultural event and share their heritage with their community, is not a privilege everyone has. Then we talked through the hard stuff: experiencing homelessness, experiencing abuse, experiencing racism. Then the next week we moved into gratitude since it was Thanksgiving! Students created a thankfulness tree, wrote letters to teachers, and participated in a thankfulness class Instagram challenge.

This month I would like to highlight a very special mentee named Alexis. Alexis started the school emanating the squirrel mentality. He had a lot of trouble paying attention, staying on task and completing his work. By parent-teacher conferences in October, Alexis had not turned in one assignment. As I sat with his mom and told her what was going, all of which Alexis had to translate, she looked at him with tears in her eyes said, "Hijo, estoy muy preocupado. Que esta pasando?" Son, I am very worried. What is going on? Alexis didn't have an answer and looked down at his shoes and said he was sorry and that he would try to make it up to her. By the end of that week Alexis had all his missing work turned in, was paying attention in class, and was ignoring his friends who usually distracted him. A couple weeks later Alexis would come into class and ask to do work for Science class. He said he had a big test later in the week and he really needed to study. On fun Friday, while other students were playing games and talking, Alexis sat and studied. When he got up to leave he shouted at me, "Miss, I am so nervous!" I told him that he has been working hard all week and I was sure he would do great. And what do you know, Alexis got a perfect score!

The Mentor I would like to highlight this month is Alejandro. This is his second year as a mentor, and while overall he is a great student, he loves to play video games on his computer. Alejandro has a mentee who loves to do the same and is often just zoned out. The past two weeks, after having a pretty in-depth conversation with Alejandro about his role as a mentor, he has really turned it around and focused on helping his mentee. They both have been actively engaged in group activity and discussion as well as completing their work on time!

October at Scott Carpenter

October at Scott has been a blast! First, to kick off Red Ribbon Week and to inspire kids to say no to drugs we had a helicopter come to our school?! A bit odd but it was special nonetheless. Then we dove right into learning about our values and the kids really enjoyed the activity. Basically they started with 20 cards of things they loved and over the series of events had to eliminate 15 of them! The last five were the most important things in their lives and told them a lot about what they valued. 

We had a teamwork and inclusion day today where we had a series of challenges that each team had to participate in from all different knowledge bases. Some were math questions, some about music, some about the history and then some physical activities. The picture is of two students competing for the longest plank hold... this is them at 3 minutes and 45 seconds!!!! Let’s be clear here... I can maybe do it for 30 seconds and they made it to 4 minutes! 

This month we also focused on Culture and Identity. We explored both our classroom culture and our personal cultures in various ways. Below are a couple pictures of students drawing about their cultures. As well, we explored our individual identities through readings from A House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros, bubble maps that included all the things they identify with, and very beautiful identity poems.

This month I would like to highlight a young mentor and mentee pair. Aaron is a 7th grader who is quite quiet but who tries his hardest every day he is in my room. He is gentle, kind, and very supportive of his mentee. He has started to come out of his shell a lot this year and is participating in group discussions and offering to lead some games in class. His Mentee Adrian is not shy at all. Adrian is a wonderful student who has a brilliant imagination and whatever group he is in wins every time for the most creative ideas. He is a powerhouse in group discussions and always has very beautiful and thought-provoking insights. As a team, Aaron and Adrian bring calm, motivation, and inspiration to the entire classroom.

September at Scott Carpenter.

September at Scott Carpenter has been a blast!
We have worked extremely hard at creating a strong classroom culture that allows all
students to feel safe, supported and listened to.
We have worked through many lessons this month including: Creating Community,
Coat of Arms, Shared Agreements, Spaghetti Towers, Speed Matching, and Culture.
We watched a short movie about Ubuntu, which is a South African concept that deals with
community and at its base explains, "If you're ok, I'm ok. If you're not ok, I'm not ok."
The students then created their own definition of Ubuntu and created shared agreements
based on those definitions. We had a blast working together to build spaghetti towers!
This month we also played a game called Shark-Tank that the students loved!
They got a random object and had to create a sales pitch for the object and sell it to a panel
of judges, or sharks. The creativity was amazingly silly and impressive.

We also made projects to represent our cultures. Students worked incredibly hard on these and still perfecting them!

This month I would like to highlight a student has shown tremendous growth.
Angelo started the year off with a little bit of a struggle.
He had a hard time focusing, staying in his seat and sometimes keeping his hands to himself.
He and I worked together to create a behavior plan that worked for the both of us and since
then Angelo has shown impressive growth. He is on task, he works hard,
he contributes positively in classroom discussion and most importantly he has taken leadership
roles without being asked. He is even helping Mentors who are struggling with their Mentees.

Then there is Ms. Ana. She has stepped into the Mentor role for the second time this year and
I cannot be more grateful for her!
Her class has a student who is need of a special kind of person to mentor them.
This student is very active, very unfocused and all over the place both physically and mentally.
He was placed with a mentor who had been unable to interact with him in a consistently
positive way. Ana stepped in, without being asked but asking me instead, to give it a try.
She has shown incredible patience, grace, and guidance to this young man.

August at Scott Carpenter

We have had such a great start the school year here at Scott Carpenter! The YESS Program has been filled with laughter, great conversation, and a ton of community building. August has been spent experimenting with group dynamics, working on some tough challenges you will see below, and really getting to know each other. 

The YESS students have learned and practiced circle talks and what it means to listen to each other to create spaces where we all feel heard. We have started building a comfort level with each other by coming up with skits to show the right ways to be in the classroom and the wrong ways to be in the classroom. These were wonderfully awkward to watch and the kids were able to safely laugh with each other. 

We have played a lot of fun team games together like Indiana Jones, the video below, where the class had to roll the ball as fast as they could to try to get the runner. We played Ellen's Game HeadsUp, video also below, which was filled with enthusiasm all day! 

This week we worked on a team challenge called Shark Tank where the students explored what it means to be an entrepreneur and maybe how hard it is to pitch their ideas. The teams were given a random item, like a jump rope, drum, fidget spinner, anything I had in my classroom really. Then they had to decide what the item is, what it does, and it couldn't be or do what the item actually was or did. They had to determine how much it cost to make, how much they were going to actually charge for it, and how much they were going to ask for from the Sharks (or Judges). Then they had to present to the Sharks and pitch their idea, this was also wonderfully awkward to watch as some of the pitches were just great. Thank you Portia at Adam's City Middle School for this idea! They are already asking to do it again next week. There is a video below of one of my favorite inventions inspired by Kylie Jenner!

Week 37 at Scott

The week we say goodbye. This week was full of events and sad goodbyes either to our 8th graders or to students who we know aren't coming back. We started the week watching The Hate U Give. THen passed out our time capsules from the beginning of the year. I know a bunch of the students had wished they put more of an effort into their time capsule as some were opened with funny, inspirational, memorable things inside. Then we had a fun Thursday this week and played a lot of different games with marshmallows, see below. Why I thought that would be a good idea with carpet, I'll never know, but the students had a ton of fun! On Friday the students spent the day in different fun rotations around the building and then had time to just play wherever they wanted.

To all the parents reading this: I have learned so much from each and every student this year and thank you for raising such wonderful kids.

To the Students reading this: Thank you for all your hard work and insight on tough topics this year. Each and every one of you has taught me valuable lessons that I will keep with me for next year and years to come.

To community members and leaders: Thank you for the constant support and willingness to keep this program running.

I cannot wait for next year!