2/20/17- 2/24/17

This week was a short week at North. Students participated in a career day, and students were also given a day to make up work in classes that they had a D or less in. In between these days students focused on their personal anger. Students were to identify what is anger, what triggers their anger, and how does knowing what their triggers are be helpful in future situations.

In this lesson students discussed what their anger looks like, and how they feel when this emotion takes over. Students shared their different experiences with anger, as well as shared ideas on how they can take control of the situation.

This week we also started a discussion on accountability.  We discussed how we can be accountable for our actions and ourselves. Students shared times it is harder to be accountable and why some times it is harder to take accountability. Overall this week was a great week of reflection and building on our self-awareness.

February 13th, 2017- February 17th, 2017

This week mentor leaders continued to recruit mentors for the 2017-2018 school year. Mentor leaders are doing a great job of advocating for the program and telling the rest of North what a great program and opportunity it will be to be apart of YESS next school year.
As of today, we have 30 potential mentors for next school year. We are hoping to recruit around 60 mentors before spring break. The mentees will be identified by teachers and counselors.

Also this week students continued to reflect on peaceful conflict resolutions as well as worked on missing assignments for other classes  classes. The last lesson we did this week was called "Belief Systems." Students were to reflect on what they think about themselves and how they think others perceive them. Some students said that they felt like they were a failure because they never turn in their assignments for class. We talked about the quote that came with the lesson which said, "What you believe, you are." We discussed that if you think badly about yourself or feel like you are a failure, it will affect your work. We discussed ways we can love our selves by telling ourselves things like, "you can do it." We made a goal of doing daily affirmations to ourselves, and if we forget we can think about what great thing happened that day; for example, getting to class on time, or maybe talking to a teacher about a missing assignment.  Overall, this was a great week full of recruiting, self reflection, problem solving, and developing new beliefs about ourselves.

2/6/17-2/10/17

Mentor leader giving a student a list of missing assignments 

This week was a busy week for YESS students. This week students began to reflect on conflicts and how to solve these conflicts peacefully. We discussed the steps it takes to resolve conflicts without having to resort to violence. We discussed the different conflicts we face on the daily basis. Some of these conflicts include conflicts with: family members, co workers, teachers and administration, and of course with friends. We discussed how it is important to think about the steps we will take in order to problem solve.

This week we also reflected on relationships in our lives through a lesson called "Apple Pie." In this lesson students analyze a few relationships in their lives and determine if each person in the relationship is "eating their part of the pie" meaning are the giving in as much as the other person, or are they eating the whole pie, or crumb eating.

Homework day

On our block days this week students used these days to work on missing assignments as always, as well as work on homework and talk with their mentor/ mentee. We are only a few weeks back from winter break and already I see many mentees from last semester stepping into the role of a mentor and leader. It is great to see mentors and mentees helping out one another as well as supporting one another!

Conflict Resolution day 

Dannikka Blog from North

My name is Dannikka Frazzini, I am the program assistant for YESS at North. This week has been full of self understanding. We have worked on understanding the root of our emotions; where they come from, how they cause us to behave as well as how to control them. We spent some time looking at forgiveness and learning about how a lack of forgiveness can be toxic to our personal lives. These lessons have helped students connect to each other as well as to Tracie and myself. Throughout a typical school day most high school students are never given an opportunity to really evaluate themselves in this manner. Our students used these lessons to create Emosmart goals and refocus themselves. As we are a few weeks into the semester its important to make sure that everyone is staying on top of their school work. At this point of the semester many students start to fall behind in classes, setting Emosmart goals are a perfect way to ignite desire to be successful.

Dannikka Frazzini
Program Assistant