March 14th-16th. Phew, did this week fly by quick! Almost felt like I blinked twice and it was already Friday!  While we flew by this week unseemingly quick, we continued to work on our usual progress; the mentors and mentees continued with their regularly scheduled programming. On Tuesday, we tutored. Now that conferences are over, the students are re-energized and ready to work on their assignments. Keep in mind, we kept our focus on meeting our mentees needs. Therefore, we went over class and homework priorities. With that focus, we were able to get a lot done in both our after school sessions on Tuesday and Thursday, in addition to addressing many students’ stress and worrisome over grade falls. But not to worry! We continually asked questions to see where they would fall and see where we could push them to deliver some of their worries and slide falls. But, last not least lancers still arise strong!

Happy March!

This week up as we approach early March, we continued to work intensively on grade checks and introduce a new game activity in our program.

Tuesday, we went over homework and class reports. With that, my mentees and I started to examine very closely with their grades with each class and their grade percentages. By examining each of their grade percentages and potentially what assignments are downing their grade or missing in the grade book, I sat with both of my mentees, followed along with a new mentee into my group, Diana Solto, we did a verbal step by step plan to improve those grades even higher than their B or A streak. Additonally, I followed up giving them advice about what habits they want and don’t want to keep for the next following year in order to keep themselves productive and top of their work. Later during their conversation, they asked me how I was able to maintain and be persistent with my schedule. With that, I told them “For me, it is honestly learning how to manage and being consistent with your work. Like myself, I learned to set my values and worked my schedule around what was important and if they matched up to my values.” I added on, “Sometimes I found myself overwhelmed with the commitments I had, but I told myself that it would all be worth it in the end if what I was doing matched matched my values as a person.”

Shifting to Thursday, our team came up with a new lesson plan called “Life with the Wright Family”. The objective of the game is listening story where one person will read out a story. Within this story, you will hear a repetition of “left” and “right”. Everytime you hear, a certain direction, you will pass the object (in this case, we used pins ) in that direction. Regardless if many students messed up or not, the lesson of the plan is similarly in life, we have many obstacles and distractions that will pull us “left” and “right”, however we should remember to focus on one thing in life, in this case, it was to listen very closely not only for directions but the plot of the story. In the end, Mr. Medina was able to ask them question to reflect on their communication, teamwork and listening skills both individually and as a whole group. While, many of the members enjoyed the activity. Many of whom took this time to reflect on very essential things like listening and communication skills in life. In the end, we wrapped our last 15 minutes on beautiful homework!

Coming to a closure of February, we decided to continue the progress with our mentees not only to get them more merely concentrated on their classes and homework, but to also initutate the idea to push them even harder around this time of the year in second semester. Because not only do we see the downward trend in student engagement and motivation in students all across the world around this time, but students often happen to drop their attendance in this time as well in statistical manners. By addressing this type of concern, we also try to make sure to have individual conferences with our mentees going over class grades and overall attendance rates and keep them on track in their progress after the 6 week mark of report cards. With this, we were able to have them focus on homework, meanwhile pulling half of our mentees out one by one to go over these report cards. While, the other half were left in Thursday to go over grades. But with this all, I especially want to give my biggest recognition and gratitude to all our mentees this year. With that being said, as well as the staff. Our YESS team at Lincoln are proud that we have a group of unbelievably strong and amazing mentees who come in everyday ready to conversate and ready to push themselves in academics with our vital support.

By Thursday after school, we started to actually have some conversation with our mentees about very serious events happening around the world. Although, this is a scary topic to address, it is a very vital topic to discuss and ensure that there is vastness around the building and adults to talk to. For myself, I was able to offer my support and assertiveness of being there and also being supportive in the lives of my own mentee and others. In the end, we realize that academics is very important to keep on with to ensure a ideal future for yourself, however it is as much as important to also make sure that we love in a safe environment by initiating and constantly reminding them that we are one and always one to keep them safe and free of violence from all events happening. To that, we are making moves to express that we are one and that we always look after each and every one of them.

In the very starting week of February, our program decided to begin like no other: homework Tuesdays and activities Thursdays. Starting Tuesday after school, we decided to keep the focus remained on pushing the mentees to ask questions about homework, and having discussions about keeping their grades strong as they follow into their second semester. Not only has the second semester transitioned with the same students and some newer students, but many students seem to have a closer connection with their mentors both in academics and personal level. Along with that, I started to notice that because these mentees are focused on strengthening their academics but they seem to always go past the “40 minute” mark after school. Which is, well far an aco placement for us to know they are engaged into the program itself and developing stronger relationships with their mentors.

But as we shift towards Thursday, we decided to make it focused towards more collaborative work. The activity we presumably chose was the tall tower/pyramid challenge using only marshmallow and toothpicks. The opponent of this game is to collaboratively work together to build a tall, yet strong tower or pyramid using only toothpicks and marshmallows. Towards the end of this competition, many of our mentees were able to reflect as a team and think about what some of the strengths and weak efforts as a team. The overall connection we were able to reflect towards the end made students realize that the base of your tower or pyramid is what mattered most. Such as, a student who builds a strong connection/ support system, he or she will able to use these resources to not only obtain much bigger potential than they can imagine with the support of these people, but their goals and decisions in life. Therefore, creating a balance of great connections and a strong focus will not only refers to a strong pyramid but truly keep building as they continue to focus on holding the balance and hold strong connections like the marshmallows do in order to hold the toothpicks together.

Things at Lincoln have been Going great as we finished another week of YESS. Tuesday of course was our normal Homework day. We are proud of many students as they are becoming more cautious of their grades. Its been a great feeling for Mr. Medina and I to start seeing the change in majority of the students as they start to see the importance of school, grades and their education. Majority of the parents work one or two jobs and rely on the student to make sure they are getting done what they are needing to graduate. Seeing our students start to develop the right skills to succeed in school is a heart warming feeling for us. Every student now has a buy in, into what school and YESS has to offer.
Mr. Medina has added a few new students This semester. We had 3 teachers and the school posologist come in this week to help support the new students who are needing more of the emotional support. Coming into a program mid year can be a bit scary especially if they already have emotional problems.
  Thursday was activity day. Lead Mentors have been coming in and working with me all week to present our Activity "Masks."  In this activity we hand out face masks to each student and have them start identifying on half of the mask who they were before they were  placed in YESS and who they are now on the other half. The lead Mentors worked the room talking to some students about how standoffish they were in October to where they are now. The mentees talked about how they would skip classes and had no care in the world about what school had to offer. To now, Checking their grades every week and checking in with Mr. Medina every morning. Its awesome to see such growth in the students!
To end the week, Mr. Medina had a t-shirt design contest with the mentees. The Mentee who had the best t-shirt Design won a $25 gift card. we had many students in the drawing but only one came out a winner, Miss Alyssa Morales came out with the best drawling! The Funny part about Alyssa being apart of the contest is, she argued with Mr. Medina constantly about not wanting to be in the problem and not wanting support from him! Mr. Medina would knock on her door every time she would miss YESS. Now Alyssa sits on a 2.9 GPA and tells other teachers "Mr. Medina caring about me and putting me into YESS is what made me turn around as student and made me start caring about school."
We are proud of her!

 

Last week was more of a productive week now that our students are finally getting more work from their teachers for second semester. We had a great Homework session on Tuesday. The Mentees are now starting to stay up on their grades now from the beginning so they don't have to play catch up last minute.
On Thursday we did our favorite activity called The Maze Walk.
That's when our lead Mentors try to make a difficult maze with chairs and tables. The purpose is for the mentee (who is blind fold) to listen and trust their mentee to guide them through the maze while everyone else in the room screams and tries to misguide them .(the bad friends)
What we want the mentees to see is how there are a lot of bad friends trying to mislead them in the wrong direction but if they put trust into their Mentor, or the people who are trying to help they could be led in the right direction if they listen. We hope our mentees took in this lesson next time a "friend" asks them to ditch a day of school or do something the are not suppose to.

Randi Slife

Lincoln would like to give a special shout out to one of our awesome mentees named Randi Slife. She is doing a tremendous job in the classroom and in YESS. Randi's attendance was horrible which of course reflected her grades. She was pulling F's in every class. Randi is still struggling in math, but is passing every other class and  is now sitting on a 3.1 GPA and a  85% in attendance. 

Randi is one student out of many who have received a bus pass from Mr. Medina. Mr. Medina has seen a great jump in his attendance report and will start rewarding our kids every month by buying them their monthly bus pass.

The Students want to thank Mr. Medina for being the patient, kind hearted man he is! They hope they can make him proud now that finals are 6 days away!

Good Luck Lancers!!!!!