West Leadership Weekly Round Up: October 15th - 18th

Hi all!

We had a short but busy week here at WLA as we worked on some of the early lessons in the Healthy Relationships unit and wrapped up the week with parent - teacher conferences.

On Monday and Tuesday we started off by continuing our conversations about sphere of influences and trust. We then linked it to communication and how it is integral to trusting and healthy relationships. To emphasize this, we had students play several games: telephone, Pictionary, and charades. Students got very competitive (as expected) and we had quite a bit of fun seeing the end result of both the telephone messages and drawings.

Wednesday and Thursday we dove into our lessons on the Brain and covered a lot of vocabulary, videos, and research. There is always a lot to cover with these lessons so we made sure to be thorough with introducing the many (13ish) terms and by showing a couple interesting videos that the students could gather some facts from. After this, students started their Google slideshow presentation with either their mentor/mentee or group members. Students were asked to pick a part of the brain and create a slideshow that details what it does, where it's located, several facts, pictures, and their sources. We tried to give students as much time to work on the projects together as possible and time seemed to fly by. Students got quite a bit of work done but we will certainly have to pick this back up next week!

Also on Wednesday and Thursday evenings this week we had parent-teacher conferences. Wednesday was a bit lighter on attendance but Thursday was pretty busy! It is always enjoyable to get a chance to meet the parents of our mentors and mentees. I tell the students to visit our class last in case the rest of their conferences aren't going too well. That way we can talk them up in front of their parents and help avoid an awkward car ride! Patricia and I did the best we could with our students who visited and we had quite a few positive and enjoyable conversations. We really had a good experience this year and I'm pleased with the improved turnout!

With conferences, students did not have school on Friday or the following Monday and Tuesday. Some well deserved time off. I hope they enjoyed it as we will be diving back into the Brain unit and discussing Emotions this week. Stay tuned! -Ben