Spirit Week & Identity Presentations

Last week was the best week of the 18-19 school year so far! I wish every week was spirit week because it added an extra vibe of excitement and positivity to all of our classes and just the over all culture of ACHS.  I loved coming to school in 90's gear, dressing up for a skype interview (pajamas on bottom and business on top), and dressing out for the senior class color. The pep rally was awesome and so was the powder puff game! The No Place for Hate club stayed in my room for an hour every day after school last week to prepare for the homecoming parade, they put so much work into their float.

In regards to the lessons going on in C251, the kids wrapped up their Identity Tattoo projects and presented them on Friday. Throughout the week we did a variety of get to know you Question of the Day's as well as activities and warm ups to get to help them know themselves. I think that the amount of times that I heard students say "I don't know what to say or put because I don't know who I am," was really revealing to me as to how important this idenitity work is that we are doing at YESS. We also did an exercise where students were to answer a series of 4 questions and based on how they answered them, their subconcious responses revealed the way they feel about certain topics in life. For example:

Personality Test - Subconscious trick to help reveal more of yourself to yourself

-Pick a color that identify with, a color you could see yourself as. Pick it and describe why you would pick that color. Use description words.

-Pick an animal you most identify with and describe it. If you had a spirit animal or an animal you relate to what would it be

-Your favorite way to be in water (showers, ocean, pool), what way do you enjoy the most to be in water and why

-Picture yourself sitting in a dark room you’re sitting in a chair, since its dark and your senses are out of wack you don’t know how big the room is ( tiny closet or stadium, you can’t tell). You’re comfortable, not in pain, just sitting in the chair… but way off in the distance you see a light… you don’t know exactly how far away it is, you don’t know if it’s a lightning bug or a light bulb, but you’re sitting in a chair in the dark in a room looking at this light… how do you feel about this situation in this scenario? Picture yourself there and write how you feel

------------------------- Response Interpretation Reveal---------------------------------------

1.     How you want or how you feel others perceive you – what you give off to people (example - blue, an oura of being a cool chill guy) (green, unique, down to earth, fun)

2.     How you really are on the inside. Who you truly are

3.     How you feel about relationships

4.     How you feel about death and the afterlife – too many unknowns, uncertainty creates fear inside of you? What about death scares you? What about it makes you curious, does it make you feel alive?

Here are some photos from the week as well! The first one is from Era (90's) Day, Second is a photo after the kids got done presenting projects (more pics of those to come next week), and the third is a special moment where I helped a student surprise her boyfriend by asking him out to homecoming in the beginning of class. He had to check either yes or no on the giant heart to be her date and he checked yes, it was precious and everyone clapped and a few even cried! Gotta love high school!

Until next week,
Ms. C