March, 2020 -- Take the Reins Back

"The Continental Divide"

Good Morning and welcome back to the Westside,

First and foremost, I want to thank all of you who take the time out of your day to read what has been happening here at West Leadership Academy. All of your positive vibes and the energy that you send to the campus is very much appreciated. 

There is a lot of information to dissect through for this month so I have laid out a Table of Contents as to what we will be covering in this blog.

1. Lessons Covered in February

2. Guest Speaker: Jesse Ramirez from INSPIRE

3. Senior Stand-Outs

4. The Hot Wing Blazin’ Challenge
5. Teacher-Student Shout Outs!

1. Lessons Covered in February

We covered 4 lessons, along with the main ideas of that lesson in February:

1. The Negativity Bias: Are you being Negative or Realistic?

1. What is the brain’s negativity bias, and why do we have it? 
2. What stories do we tell ourselves?  
3. How can our thoughts change our lives?

The students learned the idea that for every 3 positive comments they receive, all it takes is 1 bad comment to kick in the "negativity" side of you. Here is what they took away:

2. The Apple Pie: Owning Yourself and Your Actions

1. What roles do I play in my relationships with others?  
2. Why does the quality of our relationships depends on what we put into them?

3. A Special Edition of Valentine’s Day: Are you in a toxic relationship?

1. What is teen dating violence, and what does it look like?
2. Who are abusers, targets, bystanders, upstanders?
3. What is the Cycle of Violence? 
4. How do I know if I am in an abusive relationship?
5. How can I share this with a trusted adult?

We walked through the difference between a healthy relationship vs toxic relationship. Here is what we found: 

What I also presented was two videos from the TV series "What Would You Do? Abusive Relationships in Public

1. "Boyfriend verbally and physically abuses girlfriend"

2. "Jealous girlfriend berates her bartender boyfriend"

Now, yes, these are all actors who are being paid to re-enact scenes to essentially provoke people in public. However, the kids truly enjoy seeing videos like these to test whether or not people would get involved or not.

I asked my students to not be bystanders, and instead, be upstanders if they ever see anything like this happen to a close friend, a family member, and quite frankly, themselves also to break the cycle of violence.

4.  Your Belief System: Who Are You When No One is Looking at You?

1. How can we turn our limiting beliefs into empowering beliefs? 
2. Why do our beliefs affect the way we see ourselves, others, and the world? 
3. What is the relationship between fear and belief systems? 

I am always looking for opportunities to use the comic book hero Batman in my lessons and what better way than to use his story and his character development than in this lesson. 

The concept is simple: How do you turn the obstacles that are in the way of your success, as motivation? In other words, how do take what LIMITS you, and turn it into something that EMPOWERS you? 

As a class, we watched the 2005 movie, "Batman Begins" directed by Christopher Nolan. In it, we found 3 main events that challenged how Bruce saw himself to be limited by his own fear and anger to do great or terrible things.

Here are 3 examples that we found in the movie: 

My students then took the task on for themselves and found their own 3 events that LIMITED them and found a way to turn it into an event that EMPOWERED them, which if they are ok with, I will share with you in next month's blog.

2. Guest Speaker: Jesse Ramirez from INSPIRE

INSPIRE founder Jesse Ramirez came down to the Westside to speak to my 2nd-period Seniors who are ready to graduate in 3 months. Jesse is a Colorado State University Alumni and Founder of INSPIRE, a non-profit in Denver that is dedicated to helping students achieve their goals and inspire change within people.

Straight from their website page, http://www.coloradoinspires.org/

"The Mission of INSPIRE is to ignite, train, and invest in our Youth to become Social Change Agents. We strive for cross-generational impact in breaking the cycles of oppression in our families, schools and communities. We believe empowered Youth have the ability to construct innovative solutions and generate hope for an equitable future." - http://www.coloradoinspires.org/

Jesse has been a true advocate for students like ours to reach their true potential. He lead a session named “The Foundations of Your Heart” in which he gave our kids 5 key items we should all be striving towards:

1. Social Change
2. Love
3. Possibility
4. Leadership
5. Community

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I am a huge believer that people need dramatic examples to shake them out of apathy and I can’t do that by myself. People like Jesse, who has been working in the education field and put in the time, know exactly what these students are capable of doing with a little bit of grit and hard work. Coach Dino and I stood back and let him work his magic, and let me just say, the energy in the room and within the students was definitely different.

Thank you for coming in Jesse, we really appreciate the talk you were kind enough to share with us. Thank you for being an agent dedicated to creating change in others.

3. Senior Stand-Outs

I am going to highlight 3 of my Seniors who have now found out what they will be doing during the next four years. First up, one of my Mentor Leaders, Fernando Torres. Fernando has made a commitment to join the Air Force! He will be reporting for duty on June 15th, so please be so kind as to send him all of the positive vibes you can. He will surely need them as he leaves all of us for the next chapter of his life. 

Para adelante, Fernando. Nunca retrases tus pasos.

Two of my other Seniors, Ulises Heredia and Fernando Espinoza, have also made big commitments. They have both decided to attend the University of Denver in the fall on full-ride scholarships. DU has a very special relationship with West, because of the Volunteers in Partnership Program. The VIP program lead by Linda Quintanar is in its 30th year of serving the public good. It has been a direct pipeline into the university. The program offers students that are willing to put in the work, the commitment, and the sacrifice with scholarships to be able to earn a degree from the University, as well as having a place that feels like home. The 

Both my sister and my brother along with myself were able to earn a degree from DU because of VIP and what it stands for. We would not be here without this program and people like Linda who have paved the way for students like Fernando and Ulises. This one is for you boys. Now, the real work begins. 

To all three of you, enjoy what time you have left with your classmates. Your lives will never be the same once you leave West. And you will be better because of it. 

Congratulations, boys. You’ve made me proud.

4. The Hot Wing Blazin’ Challenge

For Valentine’s Day, I decided to have some fun for the class and I decided to challenge them to a Hot Wing eating challenge. The sauce that I chose for them was the hottest available at Buffalo Wild Wings. The challenge was simple:

Hot Wing Blazing Challenge:

1. 8 wings in 6 minutes
2. No ranch, milk, water at all
3. If you decide to get ranch, you need to get an additional wing
4. The minute you can get water, milk, you are DQ’d
5. NO MEAT ON THE BONE IN ORDER TO BE DONE

Prizes

1. $25 Gift card - Mo
2. Subway card - Javi
3. T-shirt - Fernie
4. DU Jersey - Guerro
5. DU Sweater - Viviana & Ulises

The idea is to bring all of my students together so that they can experience being part of a community that looks out for each other and makes sure we are pushing each other to continue moving forward. I am immensely proud of being able to teach my students these values of hard work, community, and integrity. At the end of the day, we can also have fun, and what better way than to eat hot wings together.

5. Teacher-Student Shoutouts!

For this month, I had many teachers turn in responses over how my students are displaying our 5 Social-Emotional Learning Competencies. Below, you will see direct emails from teachers here at WLA. Enjoy!

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The month of February flew by, but in it, we took the opportunity to show up, roll up our sleeves, and get the work done. The Mentor Leadership Team is dedicated to serving the students of West Leadership Academy, and with a bit of hot sauce and some hard-core lesson planning sessions, we will continue to move forward until the end of the year.

As always, thank you for reading the blog and staying in touch with my community that has allowed me to come back and be an agent of change for others. 

The Cowboy Way.

Happy reading, y'all.

Cowboys, Out.

The newest addition to the Westside.