Week 10 at ACHS

This week the ACHS mentor leaders began teaching some of the YESS class and writing the ACHS YESS blog!
This week classes talked about the power of choosing. Students began the week having a discussion around the proverb, "you can't control the wind but you can adjust your sails". Students wrote about what the quote meant to them, some said that you can't control what happens around you, but you can control the way you handle it. Students gave examples of things they do have control over in their own lives, some examples included completing their homework, what they eat, what time they sleep, or how they act or respond to situations in class. After that, mentees and mentors paired up to complete a reading titled "The power of choosing your thoughts". We learned about positive and negative attitudes as well as what goes on in someone's mental state. Over the course of this week, the students in the class focused on their fear. After watching a Ted Talk, the students realized the first step to conquering fear is finding out what they fear. After identifying their fears, the students wrote down what steps they could take to conquer their fear.
This week one of our mentor leaders designed and implemented a lesson on study skills and staying organized in school. She led a discussion and shared her own experiences with school and the ways in which has learned to study and stay organized while juggling college classes, applying for college and scholarships, and finishing her senior year of high school.

Week 9 at ACHS

This week marked the halfway point in the semester for ACHS students. Students were busy studying for midterms and getting missing work turned into their teachers. Mentors had the opportunity to participate in mentor trainings with Dannikka this week. Mentors got to hear about Dannikka's experiences as a mentor and mentor leader at North while she was in high school. She discussed challenges and successes she had had with her own mentees. YESS classes wrapped up their community building unit with an art project exploring their values, goals, community, culture and personal identity. Students were asked to think of their identity through the analogy of an iceberg, and to explore what parts of their identity they share with the world and what parts they keep hidden beneath the water. This activity was meant to be a personal reflection of what we have done in our YESS classes thus far this year.

Week 8 at ACHS

This week at ACHS many students were excited about homecoming and the events leading up to the dance. YESS students discussed the relationship between values and goals and learned how to assess their goals using a SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats) analysis. Mentees worked with their mentors to help them identify challenges they might face in achieving their goals, as well as opportunities they have in school and in their communities to help support them in reaching their goals. This week YESS students also created maps of the people in their world to help them identify the different support systems in their lives and the different networks they can use to help them achieve their goals.

Week 7 at ACHS

This week at ACHS students finished discussing culture. Students discussed how their own cultural backgrounds impact their experiences in the classroom. Students then discussed how culture relates to the classroom and what type of classroom culture they would like to see in their YESS classes. This week YESS students also had the opportunity to attend a field trip to the Sie Film Center in Denver to see a screening of one of the films that was featured in CineLatino, a film festival celebrating Latino cinema. YESS students attended a screening of "Clever", a short film documenting the life and work of Gerardo Lopez. As the director of Homies Unidos Denver, Gerardo does youth gang intervention work after he himself left the gang scene in LA to start a new life in Denver. Students had the opportunity to participate in a Q&A after the film with the director, Alan Dominguez as well as with Gerardo. 

Week 6 at ACHS

Last week at ACHS we finished our unit on trust. Students started off the week having discussions around trust, and they began thinking about the different types of relationships in their lives. They were then encouraged to think about who they trust in their lives and why. Students brainstormed how to build trust and then designed posters representing behaviors that build trust and behaviors that destroy trust. Students then completed a team building activity where they broke out into small groups and designed and built bridges out of various materials including popsicle sticks, pipe cleaners and cardboard. Students then tested out the strength of their bridges with jenga block. Students finished off the week discussing culture. Students were asked to come up with working definitions of culture. Students were encouraged to think about their own identities and the role that their culture plays in their identity, which led into our discussion on classroom culture.

Week 5 at ACHS

This week at ACHS we continued conversations about mentoring and began discussing trust. Students were encouraged to think about who they trust in their lives and who the do not trust and why. Students then began thinking about what creates trusting relationships and what destroys trusting relationships. Students then broke out into groups and designed posters with the theme of trust.
This week mentees also had time to work with mentors on completing homework and making sure they were caught up on all the assignments listed in IC for their classes. Many of the students have also been excited about working on ACHS YESS t-shirt designs to submit next week.

Trust Poster

Students discussed types of relationships in their lives,
they then used a bridge as an analogy to discuss trusting relationship

Week 4 at ACHS

Week four at ACHS brought about some exciting new mentor-mentee relationship developments, as several more mentors joined our classes this week. Many of the students began to gain a clearer understanding of their roles in the class through several in class exercises on mentoring and the YESS program. Students also had the opportunity to spend some one on one time with a mentor or mentee.

This week we spent time learning how to read transcripts with the help of the mentors. Mentors helped mentees to understand their transcripts and the ACHS graduation requirements. Mentors then assisted mentees in mapping out their credits from last year in order to help them identifying which credits they were missing. The mentees then came up with a plan to make up any missing credits with the help of the mentor they were working with. 

Mentors and mentees also had the opportunity to learn about their roles in the classroom. Students spent time discussing what they believed the role of a mentee or mentor was in and outside of the classroom. Mentors and mentees then shared what they had discussed with the class. Students were then encouraged to think about how these expectations fit in with their shared agreements from the beginning of the year.