Hot/Cool Buttons & Productivity

Welcome back Eagles,

 Last week we went over a core YESS lesson, Hot/Cool Buttons, and learned about the spectrum of emotions that helps us to understand our own triggers and how to avoid/calm down from them.

We made a human pendulum that allowed us to get to know each other better, each person choosing a side of the human pendulum to represent where they are at on the Hot Button spectrum. We reflected on how it made us feel and how, at times, it was uncomfortable because of how this activity prompted us to not only confront our insecurities, but share them with the class. We have put in the work to build community in here so the revealing part was interestingly honest and light hearted. We concluded by debating whether or not hot buttons were positive or negative, the overall consensus was that it can be both. They can definitely sabotage our own success when we act impulsively through negative language, passive aggressive actions, or violence.

The rest of the week was dedicated to students doing make up assignments in my class and studying for midterms. I haven't seen this much silent productivity and tutoring since December! It was nice to check in with everyone individually to get a temperature check of who is where going into spring break. It should also be noted that a HUGE success for the week is that I had 9 seniors make the deadline to apply for the YESS scholarship, huge props to them!!!

Although there is no midterm in my class, the stress level can be felt a mile away from the school due to testing in other classes. These next few days will be more gifted time to them for core class midterm focus and tutoring madness- wish us luck!

See you after Spring Break!!!
Ms. C

The Mask You Live In

Last week was one for the books in the YESS room as we dove head first into the ever present theme of toxic masculinity. Our previous week's lessons on Gun Violence and Dating Abuse brought up undertones questioning and critiquing masculinity in our culture and my classes had a lot to say about their own experiences with it so I felt that it was a great time to show them one of my favorite documentaries - The Mask You Live In.

Trailer:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hc45-ptHMxo

The doc exposed a plethora of startling statistics, including:

• Boys are twice as likely to drop out of school as girls and four times more likely to be expelled.
• Compared to a girl the same age, boys in late adolescence are 7 times more likely to die by thier own hand.
• Boys under 17 drink more heavily than any other population group. 

As early as elementary school, boys confront messages that encourage them to disconnect from their emotions, devalue authentic friendships, objectify and degrade women and girls, and resolve conflicts through violence.

The Representation Project’s The Mask You Live In curriculum equips K-12 with the critical thinking skills to question gender stereotypes that interconnect with race, class, and circumstance. Students define masculinity and have the opportunity to critique gender representations and norms as they create their own positive representations of boys and men. Additionally, our students learn to develop healthy self-concepts and interpersonal relationships.

We participated in the activity as seen in the documentary where they wrote words describing how we present ourselves at school and in public spaces; what we want others to perceive us as. On the back of the mask we wrote words describing who we really are behind that front that we curate. These fronts, or these masks, are put on for survival. They are handed to us by society and the environment we grow up in and, after a while, we grow to fit those masks, or we slowly and implicitly become them by repeatedly hiding vulnerable emotions. This hyper-masculine narrative links gaining respect and solving problems with violence and provides insight to why boys act out when they are depressed. It begs so many questions for educators and students alike and exposes a universal controversial discussion that prompts us to all explore our own inner masculinity (whether we are male, female, somewhere in between, or neither) and how it can be healthy for us and poisonous for us. What is the line? At what point is emotional expression "weak", or is it courageous rather than weakness? In what ways does dominant culture try to put us in a box? These are all questions we answered and debated by analyzing the media.

What we learn from video games, movies, television, music, and pop culture has everything to do with how we view ourselves in the world. To further explore this, I had them draw a fictional character that they looked up to and share it with everyone while describing personality characteristics that belong to that character. A lot of the boys chose superman, batman, and video game characters (like the one above) and many of the girls chose cartoons or Wonder Woman. We found that the girls valued empathy, justice, emotional strength, and grit and the boys valued fighting evil with violence, having superpowers, and incredibly unrealistic physique while having the responsibility of saving the world or an entire village. This was an issue that they realized before I even shined a light on it... Does idolizing these figures put an unhealthy pressure on us to mirror them? Where is the line that represents a healthy role model?

We explored many definitions including, but not limited to, gender identity and biological sex. It took a while to get the concepts across belonging to the fact that gender is between your ears; it is an innate identity generated in your brain. How people wish to express that gender they most comfortably identify with does not always match their biological sex. This is seen as taboo, but why? Because of the gender roles that are socially constructed, it is the box society has placed on you to be seen as accepted and "successful" in life.

The Netflix documentary is a 9th-12th level content and with proper fast forwarding (I can give you the times), it is an extremely eye opening learning opportunity and makes for fruitful discussions that leave students with the eagerness to challenge the status quo. They were left with the task to QUESTION EVERYTHING! Be curious to find out why society is the way it is, realize when it is unhealthy and challenge it in your own way to do your part in helping to make this world a more inclusive place.

Until next week,
Ms. C

Gun Violence & Dating Abuse

Last week was an emotionally heavy couple of days but our intense conversation brought about many fruitful take-aways and learning opportunities.

We began the week by talking about each of the victims who lost their lives in the Parkland shooting. I displayed each of their photos on the screen and had the students take turns reading aloud who they were, what they loved, the family they left behind, and the futures that they had in store. This made so many topics important in the YESS teachings a reality- we acknowledged the need for loving one another and lending kindness because you never know the battles that someone else might be facing. We discussed the gun violence epidemic and there were respectful debates about gun control and the work that needs to be done in this country regarding mental health and toxic masculinity. We also discussed how this event is different than a lot of other tragedies in the way that there are students, the young people who are the survivors of Parkland, who are courageously using their platform to stand up for what the believe in. These young people from Florida are trying to make a change to create a safer and more moral world. I feel that in a class titled Youth Empowerment that these events happening currently are the most exquisite representation of youth empowering other youth. After watching their speeches and discussions with government officials, the kids were inspired by the bravery and maturity of these students using their voices for change... after all, it was only a few weeks ago that these students were in the same position as my ACHS students; sitting in desks worrying about upcoming tests living the normal life of a teen. And now, they are worrying about writing speeches to recite them in front of the world, forcing themselves to do the work that hired officials are not doing themselves. They strive to be the last school shooting and they are determined to be written into history books as the young people who did something about their future and the future of other student's lives to come in the education system and beyond.

In the second half of the week we discussed dating abuse. This was an interesting segue from the last lesson as a point was brought up about how all the people who have committed these mass murder crimes in the US have been statistically male. There is an epidemic concerning male mental health in this country and this lead our discussion about what we can do to change this and how violence can appear on the small scale in domestic partnerships. It was also important to point out that women can be in the role of the abuser as well. A huge part of this discussion surrounded defining what the word "consent" means to each person and how it should equate with a mandatory level of respect when people are wanting to take their relationships to the next level. We learned about shocking statistics that directed our open discussion where people who felt comfortable shared experiences belonging to their personal lives. The last activity of the week was the highlight: acting out scenarios of the 6 main dating abuse topics (physical, emotional, verbal, digital, financial, and sexual) However, I left the sexual topic out of the acting exercise as I did not feel it was appropriate for them. They used their best judgement and got my approval before acting out their scenes in front of the class to compete for some homemade Mexican wedding cookies (:-)!), and because it was such a heavy past few weeks, a lot of their skits were extremely humorous while appropriately getting their points across about the dangers of an unhealthy relationship. See a clip from a skit below!

Until next week,
Ms. Castro