Week 2 -- 01/14/2019 -- 01/18/2019

Good Morning YESS Community,

As previously mentioned in last week's blog post, the students here at West Leadership Academy dedicated the majority of the classes to polishing their powerpoints to present to the class.

The presentation has 4 main components that needed to be covered:


1. Family -- Talk about the family history, siblings, home life.
2. Interests -- What our students enjoy doing in their free time, favorite music, food, video games etc.
3. Career & Educational Goals -- Students needed to talk about their aspirations (if they had any) and if they did not (which is completely ok) start researching careers/schools that they might be interested in.
4. Values -- Students needed to talk about a value that they live by (Honesty, love, character, integrity) and not only that, why this value has impacted their lives.

I set out to assign this project for two reasons:

1. Transparency -- Our students are encouraged to know one another, but it is very hard for them to open up, as it is for anyone. However, I wanted to make sure all of our students understood that this class is a safe-place for them to share their lives. Not only that, but our students don't realize that whatever they may be enduring, there may be someone else who has also endured the same experience. Again, the goal is to create a community here for one another, and I do believe that we are on the right track for that.

2. Pride -- One of the biggest lessons that I would like to teach my students outside of the main YESS curriculum is pride. They may have some idea as to what pride is. Some may have a negative experience with it, that very well might be a possibility. I am mainly talking about taking pride in everything that they do. Putting their name on something, whatever it is, is them being accountable for the work they turn in. This would be a great opportunity for them to learn how pride can be taken after they turn and present their work to the class.

Here are some photos that I took as the students were presenting.

Here is Naisett!


This week we will be starting the unit with the "Stuffers, Stabbers, and Exploders" lesson and taking the week from there. Check back in next week to see what our Leadership students are up to, as every day here at WLA another day to get better.