YESS at West Leadership Academy

Good Morning West Community, It was yet another wonderful week here at West Leadership Academy. I am happy to report that our students have finished their state-wide testing sessions, and for the most part, I can report that although students get testing anxiety, the adults in the building also felt some sort of anxiety for a variety of reasons. I think for the most part, we can all agree that we are happy and satisfied that our students pushed through the testing and finished strong. As reported last week, the classroom here at WLA started a new unit, the war on drugs. For context purposes, let me explain how my 5 sections work with each other. 2 out of my 5 sections are simply upperclassmen, meaning they are high schoolers. However, my other 3 are a combination of middle schoolers and high schoolers. In other words, my classes have a very unique way of being introduced the material. My teaching for every class adapts to either providing less structure and more independent work...

Good afternoon West Community, I am happy to report back to all of you who have kept in touch with my class here at West Leadership Academy. I want to start off by saying how much I appreciate all of the support I have received these past couple of months here at West, specifically those who have taken time to read what we have done here and taken an interest on how they can help join in on the conversation to build our students into responsible young adults. That being said, last week marked the end of Unit II here in class, Healthy Relationships. A brief summary of what our final project was about can be seen below: 1. An identity mask, whose purpose is for students to decorate with key identifying traits as to the person they are in public. In other words, who they are to the people out in public. On the inside, the students have been instructed to decorate their masks with the identity they hide from public, specifically ideas and constructs that might be holding them back. ...

Good morning West Community! Spring is finally here. The atmosphere has changed, and with these big changes comes a realization that it is crunch time here at West Leadership Academy. The majority of our students are undergoing statewide testing. If you are not familiar with testing anxiety, let me tell you all, IT IS REAL. Speaking from personal experience, I too underwent testing anxiety -- not necessarily in k-12 schools. Rather, in college exams. Some of our students do not know how to express themselves when they do undergo anxiety, and some start to show some defiant behaviors that undermine their abilities to test. Our staff here at WLA is equipped to support students if they do experience these anxiety attacks, as we fully work with them to try their best for these exams. That being said, the last thing I am going to do with my students is bombard them with new material to learn. Instead, my students started to finish their masks, and I gotta tell you, they look AMAZING. ...

Good Morning West Community, I'm happy to report back after two long weeks of being on hiatus! All of my classes, as well as myself, came back refreshed and ready to take on the final two months of the school year. Monday and Tuesday, the class took some time to do some ice breakers from our break and do some class-bonding. That being said, the unit has finally come to a conclusion, as Wednesday, Thursday and Friday were dedicated to starting to close the unit. The classroom here at West Leadership Academy has taken it's final steps to start the Unit II Final Project. The past three months, the unit has been focused on three main ideas: 1. How are our identities formed? 2. How do our choices and relationships influence our identity? 3. Which parts of our identities do we share with others, and which do we conceal? The emphasis has been to be able determine how we form healthy relationships with the people in our lives. Not only that, the goal is for our commun...

Good afternoon West Community, All of us here at WLA were caught by surprise last week when DPS issued not ONE, but TWO snow days from. I can't say that the students were disappointed, as the situation became highly unprecedented. We came back on Friday to low-student turnout so it was as if they had a good week off of school. In any case, we got to work and we did the best with what we had to work with. On Monday, one of our former YESS students came down to the West campus to talk with our students about life after high school. Major shoutout to our lovely post-secondary navigators Emily and Angie for setting up the visit! He is a student at the Community College of Denver and is on his way to finishing up his first year of higher education. Fernando was able to provide a narrative for many of our students who do not believe life after high school is different (which in case you didn't know, IT IS) Several of my students took advantage of the situation and asked insigh...

Good afternoon West Community, Spring break is right around the corner, and the students here at WLA are anxious for it to come around. Personally speaking, I definitely am as well. That being said, we here in room 114 have not taken our foot off the gas pedal, and we are heading full-speed for the next two weeks. We were on a short schedule last week, as the school took Monday off to do some professional development for next month's CMAS testing. Tuesday and Wednesday, we dedicated the 90 minute block period to our middle school students closing out their grades, as the quarter was coming to an end. Many of our students have taken advantage of the time that we have provided to them and have significantly improved their grades. Many of my mentor pairs work together to ask for help in the classes where they might not have the best grades. The goal around that is to let the student know they are not alone in asking for help, as their mentor is behind them backing them up. We have see...

Good afternoon West Community, Last week, the class turned into one big studying session. Monday and Tuesday was dedicated to my students pairing up with their mentors and mentees and catching up on their classwork, as the quarter here at WLA is coming to an end. We take pride in offering a space where students can work not only on the classwork but also, the craft of being a well-rounded student. Classroom Instruction: Wednesday and Thursday: My class covered the Hot + Cool Buttons Lesson! The lesson essentially asks students how do we reinforce out limiting and empowering beliefs? What are or hot & cool buttons? And ultimately ask students to critically think about how their trigger points about themselves can become empowering rather than being limiting in just how much we belief in ourselves. The questionnaire is split up into 8 different sections, all of which have 8 statements to chose from that are relate able to the person taking the questionnaire -- However, the...