Welcome back to the Westside.
First and foremost, I’d like to thank everyone who has followed us through the past 6 months here at West Leadership Academy.
All of you who send us positive messages, send us positive vibes, or just simply walk by and support our kids, we greatly appreciate you. That being said, here’s the rundown of what you will be reading in this month’s blog.
1. What we did in January
2. Student profiles
3. Positive Teacher/Student comments
Unit II Lessons:
The first item on the agenda is what I had students do when they got back on January 7th. I took all five of my sections outside and had them work with one another to build teamwork and communication skills that they need in order to cross a challenge together. The idea is simple. The whole group starts at point AA, they need to get the entire group across to point B, but the catch is they can only step on the pieces of paper that I supplied them with. In other words, if they step outside of the piece of paper, they have to start over at the beginning of the challenge. There were a few mixups and a few concerns among the students mainly based on them thinking as individuals instead of the team. The goal of the exercise was for them to think as a whole group, as a team, where they rely on one another, where they let someone lied, where they followed directions, and ultimately they knew how to communicate with one another because, at the end of the day, no one is left behind.
Under the leadership of their Lead Mentor, these classes have come along way since the beginning of August. It was time for us to test out whether or not they feel comfortable with one another and ultimately if they trust in one another. You Can find out a lot about a group of people in 20 minutes, And that’s exactly what happened that day.
The lessons we covered in January are listed below. Here are the main ideas of those lessons.
- Emotions: What Are They
- What are the (6) universal human emotions?
- Why do we have emotions, and how are they expressed?
- The Negativity Bias
- What is the brain’s negativity bias, and why do we have it?
- What stories do we tell ourselves about who you are? In other words, do you “GAS YOURSELF UP” or do you put yourself down? Why?
- How can our negative or positive thoughts change our lives?
- Fear: What It Is
- What is fear, and why do we have this emotion?
- When is fear helpful and harmful?
- How can welcoming our fears help us become peaceful and fearless?
Ultimately, Some of my students are curious and tend to go above and beyond to ask what exactly we are learning and how this is exactly going to apply to their lives?
They ask me, “So what?” So what if we learned about emotions people being negative and people being fearful of things? What does that have to do with me? How am I going to use this in my own life? Is this really going to help me out long-term? How do I know you’re just not giving us busy work just to do what you gotta do?
And I think the way that I can answer that is by asking them this.
Overall, how do your emotions, the negativity bias that might or might not have an effect on how you view yourself, and fear of the unknown all affect your ability to build healthy relationships with the people you surround yourself with?
I can’t answer these questions for them. The staff here at WLA shows our students the way, but ultimately they need to put in the work to answer these questions on their own individual journeys. With a little bit of luck and a daily reminder that the more you love what you do, you’ll never work a day in your life, we think we can send them on their way with confidence.
Student Profiles: The Mentor Leadership Team
The Mentor Leadership Team that serves our students have done an excellent job this past month. I have empowered each and every single one of them into to do the best job they possibly can. This past month, they started to provide input and draft their own class discussions revolved around the three lessons we did from Unit II.
What we also did was take class photos, and then at the end, one big photo as the entire organization. Each of my Leads has a different personality, and for the most part, the students we serve in those periods take the personality traits of these 5 leads.
2nd Period: Viviana Torres
The class in 2nd period displays being very friendly, ambitious, reliable, passionate, kind, & considerate. I would argue that Viviana is just like this as well. She is surrounded by great individuals who have great chemistry, and they all play a great hand in making her class what it is. The way Viviana brings them together is by using her people skills and essentially is not afraid to stand up for what she believes in. The people around her see the work she puts in, and they respond to that same energy. A calm, fierce demeanor is what she brings to the table, and everyone sees it.
5th Period: Joe Escareno
The class in 5th-period displays being very fun, helpful, understanding, good friend, & trustworthy. This class has been full of happy personalities, and Joe finds a way to use those personalities to serve the rest. Joe is someone who is great to talk to and it is very evident in class that people thrive around his presence. When the class is feeling low, Joe immediately tries to lighten up the tension in the room, and bring everyone out of their shell. That’s what all of the students like about him.
8th Period: Fantasia Garcia
Fantasia by far is the top person in her class. Fantasia has everyone working the way they need to be working and at the end of the day, The students respect her for who she is. Fantasia is independent, strong, understanding, hard-working, and dynamic. Her class feeds off of her energy, but not only do they respond and Do what’s needed to be done when she lays out her game plan. At the end of the day, all of the middle schoolers here respect and look up to her.
9th Period: Naisett DeLeon
The class and ninth. Has Naisett, and she is very supportive, very persistent, very exuberant, hard-working, passionate, but at the end of the day she is very kind. Her class at times can be very quiet and can be very withdrawn, but Naisett is very persistent in making her role into her own. She has the right attitude for being someone in a position to lead, as she does not take this responsibility lightly. I commend her for what she has done with all of them.
7th Period: Fernando Torres
The class in the seventh period is by four full of some of the most energetic kids I’ve ever taught in my entire life. Fernando is poised truthful, confident, practical, tough, everything in the day very smart in order to get these energetic students to do what they got to do in class. Fernando Matches their energy and keeps them busy the way they know how to stay busy: by being very competitive with each other. In other words, Fernando and I accommodate the high energies of our students and use it to our advantage to make sure that they are not seen as kids who cannot learn or sit down. Rather, these kids are meant to be seen as no different than anyone else. And there’s no one better to have in here than his competitive spirit.
The Entire Organization:
We had a few kids missing, but overall, these kids are the future.
Positive Teacher Reports:
When I send out my monthly blog, I send it out to the entire WLA staff, in hope that they can see what our students are doing in the room. This time, I asked for some reports on my students based off of the 5 Social Emotional Learning Core Competencies:
Our 5 Social Emotional Learning core competencies are:
- Self-Awareness -- Identifying their emotions, accurate self-perception, recognizing their strengths, self-confidence, self-efficacy
- Self-Management -- impulse control, stress management, self-discipline, self-motivation, goal-setting, organizational skills
- Social Awareness -- perspective-taking, empathy, appreciating diversity, respect for others
- Relationship Skills -- communication skills, social engagement, relationship-building, teamwork
- Responsible Decision Making -- identifying problems, analyzing solutions, solving problems, evaluating, reflecting, ethical responsibility.
I am very pleased to report that I did receive comments back. You can check them out below:
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We have great students, and I am very proud of what they all do for themselves, for each other, and for the West Leadership community. Next month, I hope to have more to show all of you reading what we do.
This month, we will cover the remaining lessons from Unit II. As always, thank you for reading this blog. Keep flowing positive energy our way. We do not take any of it for granted.
Happy reading, y'all.
Cowboys, out.
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| Credit to our Family Advocate, Coach Dino Abeyta. For all you do, Coach. Thank you. |
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