West Leadership Weekly Round Up: October 23rd-25th

Hello!

We had a short week here at West Leadership Academy with no school for students on Thursday and Friday. That said, we made sure to make the most of it! 

On Monday, the class wrapped up our conversations regarding the 6 basic universal emotions and began a discussion on one emotion in particular: fear. Our conversations focused on how we can use fear as a motivating tool that helps us accomplish our goals. 

As with our typical Tutoring Tuesday, mentees checked their grades and listed their missing assignments, 0's, and late work. From there, mentors created action plans to help resolve these issues. We are continuing to track our grades and follow up on our action plans each week in order to maintain accountability and see academic improvement take shape. 

Making time to clean and get organized on Thursday

On Wednesday the class was introduced to the concept of negativity bias - the idea that things of a negative nature have more of an affect on us than things that are positive or neutral. By understanding negativity bias, we can counteract it by focusing on the positive in our lives. I challenged the students to come up with 3 positives for every 1 negative in order to start thinking along these lines. Negativity bias and control of one's emotions will continue to be an important lesson that we will come back to. 


On Thursday and Friday no classes took place. Thursday was a teacher planning day where I was able to focus on lesson planning and getting things reorganized in the classroom. 

Empty hallways for the first time all year

On Friday, teachers attended a C.L.A.V.E.S. training (Contextualized Learning for Access, Validation, Equity and Success) led by the group Dual Language Education of New Mexico. In our second session since the year began, we discussed the pathways and strategies to support dual language learners in our classrooms. For YESS in particular, several pathways stood out as being important including: Planning for Peer Interaction, Creating Shared Knowledge, and Affirming Identity. By using the strategies and being cognizant of the challenges faced by dual language learners, we can better support them and bring out their full potential as learners. 

Next week we will have parent teacher conferences  on Wednesday and Thursday. I'm looking forward to it! See you next time! -Ben