We had another fast, fun, and busy week here at West Leadership Academy!
This week we were able to work through some major components of our unit on community which included discussions on social and emotional learning, an introduction to mentoring, an overview of scholarship and academic study skills, and even a time capsule activity.
On Monday, we followed up with our conversation the previous week on Social and Emotional learning and wrapped up our discussion on all of the major tenets. We then spent our shortened Tuesday focusing on tutoring and homework help. This will be an ongoing theme on Tuesdays throughout the year and this week most students needed support in Math and Geography. As the year progresses we can be sure to expect this dedicated time to be even more important and will include weekly grade checks and support in advocacy with teachers.
Finishing out the week we had several YESS core lessons and subjects to discuss and the students really seemed to take to them. First, we introduced the students to what mentoring is and what it looks like. Many seemed surprised by how impactful mentorship has been in so many successful people's lives. Additionally, I was very happy to see students so eager to want to participate in the mentor leader position. Beyond the obvious benefits of the position (such as pay), many students seemed excited with the prospect of leading their fellow classmates as well as gaining valuable experience for their college and post-secondary resumes. After this engaging discussion and introduction, we spent our time on Thursday introducing students to the idea of scholarship and academic preparedness. After discussing what a scholar is, I then spent the remainder of our time providing a study skills and academic preparation workshop for the students. Many had questions ranging from time management to organization to test taking strategies so I felt this would be a helpful way to model what scholarship and academic study habits really look like. The students seemed to appreciate the opportunity to get their questions answered and hopefully we'll see some of these strategies in action with further modeling.
On Friday we spent the day discussing time capsules and filling out our time capsule packets. We discussed how time capsules are a snapshot in time and how we can use them to reflect on how we've grown, changed, and accomplished our goals over the course of the year. Over the weekend I've asked students to gather artifacts representing this time in their lives. This could be anything from photos with friends to receipts from their favorite restaurant to even concert tickets from a show. I'm looking forward to seeing what students come with on Monday and how much we will be developing together as a community when the capsules are reopened again in May.
Looking forward to another exciting week! -Ben
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