The Brain, YESS is LOVE, and Learning about US!

The past two weeks have been so busy here in our YESS room!

Where to even start. Well, last week was a short week because of our 3 day weekend and with Friday being a half day but we still managed to get a lot done. We ended our web of emotions posters from the week before and related it a lot to the movie Inside Out- its crazy how we all have those core emotions in us that make up memories and make up who we are. We also liked discussing how happiness would be nothing without sadness, they are the ying and yang to each other, if you will. Also the week before last was Valentines day and instead of it being a cheesy holiday that makes us all feel like single sad lonely saps we filled our day with love and talked about what we love about ourselves and what we value in each other. Castro gave each of us individual valentines that had little notes saying what she loved about each of us, it made us feel special. We also talked about the concept of love and what the definition means to all of us and how we can love in a lot of ways- friends, family, significant others, passions. We each had a different explaination for what love is to us and it was cool to hear everyones own version of that word. I was hard to put love into a one word defintion, maybe the hardest thing I have done all year lol it took everyone a long time because we had never really thought of that before. It was great to tie in the relationship unit with emotions and also with the empowering discussion on self love that we need to have in order to spread our love to others more authentically. I got to know my classmates better during this talk with everyone. We also played a bonding game on Valentines day to bring us closer together as a class. All the classes competed to get the longest time to keep the balloons up with only our shoulders and heads. Period 2 won with a whopping 52 seconds! They win a box of pizza the day we get out for sping break, i am jalous. We also worked on the emotions word search and went into our discussion and lesson on the human brain. we asked, what intrigues you about the human brain and how do you think a teenage brain differs from an adult brain? We watched some videos describing the answers to this and learned that it stops growing at 25! We are in the important developmental years for our brain so we need to take advantage of what a sponge that this organ really is. We did an opening poster project with the lymbic system, prefrontal cortex, and hormones. Puberty effects the brain too and can make us do risky things and sometimes we have a hard time making real sense of consequences. Also we had a lot of mentor leader meetings to discuss the lessons and practice giving them, we do meetings twice a week now and it is good because we are all being pushed outside of our comfort zone and growing as leaders and professionals!

Here are some pics from everything explained above!!!

 we love our circle talks <3 here is all the mentor leaders planning their lesson on the board together

 shalayah delivering her lesson

  our valentines bags for goodies, treats, n *appropriate!!! friendly!!!!* love themed notes 

the gangs all here! 

mentor leader meeting with cupcakes!!!

Tell me why we had a fire drill and they decided to be crazy when we were already freezing

A sweet valenties note from Sierra to Ms C. Our class here is the best she is right.

Gratitude is love!!! Love is gratitude!!!!! YESS is LOVE!

Thank you for visiting, come again! Wipe your feet at the door on the way out! Don't let the dog out

Love sincerely,

Cece mentor leader for 2nd

We on Fiya with Emotions!

Hey whats up my guy its me ya gurl from 7th period again with lizbeth !

Well quick update somebody just lit a trash can on fire while we were at school. i can feel all the toxic air deleting my brain cells. BUT you know me i gotta write the class vlogg.

soooo last week we talked about emotions my guy. the 6 universal emotions, which are anger, fear, disgust, sadness, happiness, and suprised. We talked about how emotions effect gender roles in families and if they think emotions can effect genders. We (mentor leaders) all planned a game based on emotions to get a better understanding. In my 7th period we did QOTD and then an activity where i gave each person an emotion and had them pick a movie that made them feel that emotion. Then i used one of my artworks hung up in the classroom and had them write which emotion they felt from looking at that artwork, next i gave everyone a different genre of music and had them write which emotion they felt when they listened to that genre of music. last but not least i played 3 songs and had everyone write they're emotion on the songs i played. Then we finished the day with a word search with all types of emotions. It was lit!!!

Castro and Suzie (mentor leader for 6th block) at Suzie's college signing day. She is going to play college soccer and be the #1 goalkeeper for Otero Junior College. We are so proud of her!

Friendship is forever, friendship never ends

Castro and her No Place for Hate crew on the all day training they did on Tuesday. What a trip!

Until next time bros and brosephinas,

Lizbeth and Shalayah

uh oh relationships & T.H.Y.G

hey there its ya girl shalayah back with another blog, last week we watched the hate u give. The movie mostly consisted of poc fighting for their rights to speak up and protest against police brutality. The movie started off with the protagonist, her name was star and she lived in a neighborhood with mostly POC but went to a majority white school and had to switch up how she acted around people at her school and in her home town. She ended up going to a party in her hometown where she met an old friend named khalil and then a shooting broke out, so they had left the party and drove somewhere to talk and then they had gotten pulled over.

We did a very deep moving and reflective reflection. It was very thought provoking honey.

- shalayah

The mentor leaders practicing their lessons before teaching them to their classes!

Hey its me souljaboy back at it again with the vlogg with my partner shalayah and let me tell you. I could never be a teacher. I tried to teach my class while taking a vow of silence. It was the worst it was them not me.All in all i had a good time here, i got more learning experience here than i have in all my years of living. This class teached me more about perspective than anything else, We view the world by the way we were raised, by our own struggles.  By watching the movie the hate you give it impacted the whole class by giving us another point of view. 

We also played games were we had to help out our team and we had our class mentor pick a picture and one side is able to view the picture, while the other partner was told instructions on what to draw. we chose the top 2 and picked a winner between them. 

well thats our week souljaboy out (lizbeth)