Over the last month or so, I had the great opportunity to attend the National Mentoring Summit in Washington, DC, meet up with most of you for catch-ups, and collect loads of fun new resources for your classrooms!
DC was great - The weather was mostly cooperative, especially on Capitol Hill Day. During this day, I joined a slew of mentoring advocates from Colorado to meet with our Congressional Representatives. It was really cool to feel a part of the political process and to hype our work here at YESS. We met mostly with interns (it was during the impeachment, so everyone was extra busy) and they were rapt as high school scholars and others shared their stories. We asked specifically for an increase in the amount of money dedicated to various mentoring programs from $90M to $120M in the upcoming fiscal year.
The main reason I attended the conference was to co-present with two brilliant women from Aurora Youth Options. Our presentation was about how intersectionality affects mentoring matches and how to train mentors and support all matches. It was highly successful and I'm proud of the work we put into this project.
While there, I learned that Derek would be leaving us, so Jamie, Hannah and I embarked on the work of finding our newest team mate. I went back into the classroom, in the meantime. The kids were (naturally) confused, even though Derek did his part in preparing them and I'm so very glad to have Jessica on the team now. She and I co-taught for several days and she's really off to the races!
Ok, here's the good stuff. RESOURCES!
Here's a fabulous TED Talk about trauma and how teachers can support kids who experience it.
This article, Five Best Practices Teachers can Learn from Dungeon Masters, is great too! The best teachers are story tellers and it seems there are some real parallels!
Ok, this one is the one I cannot get off Facebook, but I think it's only a problem if you don't have an account. It's an AMAZING source for Black History resources. If you can't access it, be sure to let me know.
There's an saying that goes, "Teaching is less about having the right answers and more about asking the right questions." Many of you are practicing asking deep questions and this article is perfect for that. I recommend incorporating one at a time over the course of a couple of months. Pick your favorite question and work it into your practice for two weeks (or so), then add a second one for a couple weeks, and so on. If you would like further support in questioning, please reach out.
The last one is just a quick video to encourage self reflection. When we work in such stressful environments (juggling kids, phone calls, meetings, lesson plans, you know...) it's tough to take time for self reflection but it's vital for our growth. Here are some questions that are quick to answer and very handy, especially when our Hot Buttons have been pushed. Side note: I couldn't get this off Facebook either, so I hope the link works.
Have a lovely month. Thank you for reading!
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