The Weekly Ranum: Edition #11

Hello and welcome back!

This past week during Mentor/Mentee Monday the Mentors began researching leaders in history to get an idea of their leadership styles, which ones they can relate to and movements they respect that their leaders started.

Tutoring Tuesday gave students a chance to catch up before parent teacher conferences which were Wednesday and Thursday night. It's always great talking with parents and telling them about the YESS program and how well their student is doing.

Wednesday we jumped into healthy relationships and created our own Spheres of Influence. Basically the people from different areas of our lives we can go to when we need help, support, or just someone to listen/hang out with.

Thursday and Friday we worked on Trust Bridges. The idea being that our relationships are like a bridge, there are two sides and if either or both sides are made out of weak material (no communication, argumentative, dishonest, etc.) then the bridge/relationship will crumble.

It was a busy but exciting week!

The Weekly Ranum: Edition #10

Hello!

This past week we finished up our Public Service Announcements on Race. The students were very creative with their posters and I think they had a better understanding of the different vocab by the end.

As middle schoolers, they've definitely been exposed to racial interactions, whether head on or they've seen it in their neighborhoods or the news so students had plenty of stories and experiences to share. It is a heavy and difficult topic to discuss but I'm proud of my students who want to take more of a stand against racial injustice.

See you next week!

The Weekly Ranum: Edition #9

Hi all!

Last week our lessons focused on race. It was very vocab heavy so we took a lot of time dissecting the words and coming up with lots of examples so students could better understand what that word meant and how it effects us.

Some of the words include: Implicit Bias, White Privilege, Stereotype, Ethnicity, marginalize, etc.

Students then had the chance to look through a couple different web sites that gave them a ton of information on race, how it began, why it started, and who started it. They had to choose 7 facts that they did not know about before and how this fact impacts them/informs them for the future.

We'll finish race this week and hopefully end the week with something fun to get us refreshed!

Thanks for reading.

The Weekly Ranum: Edition #8

Hello all!

This past week, Mentor Monday went great. We identified some areas that our mentees are struggling in and came up with individual game plans on how to get them back on track.

Tutoring Tuesday allowed students to catch up in classes before assignment reports come out this week.

Wednesday and Thursday we worked on our YESS t-shirt designs. There were definitely some great ones which made the voting this year pretty difficult but I believe all the students will love the final design!

On No Fun Friday we played one of my favorite class builders. It's called Name 4. You sit in a circle and one person starts with the ball. You then call out a category for the person with the ball by saying, "Name 4...vegetables or names that start with M or NBA teams. They then start passing the ball around the circle and have to name 4 things that fall into that category before the ball gets back to them. If it gets back to them, they go again with a different category. If they name 4, the ball stops and the person holding it now gets a chance to name 4 of a different category. You can make the categories funny/ridiculous and overall the students love it.

Thanks for reading!

The Weekly Ranum: Edition #7

Last week we worked on the lesson plan titled Today I Choose.

It's the philosophy that no matter what is said or done, we always have the choice in how to react. It's also all about the idea that we can use positive words and think about them in those moments or even before/after those moments and use those words to protect ourselves by believing that we are better than those negative words or comments.

So we created a list of positive words and phrases that we can reference throughout the year in order to motivate us to be above the hate and negativity around us.

Have a great week!

The Weekly Ranum: Edition #6

Hello!

This week we had our first mentor/mentee Monday. It was a great chance to talk with the mentors and see how their partnerships with the mentees are going.

Tutoring Tuesday allowed students to catch up on work in other classes. Most take advantage of this time and we're already seeing noticeable gains in their academics.

On Wednesday we learned about values, what they are, what they mean to us and how they effect our decisions and choices in life.

Thursday we created goal collages that involved having long term goals inside a box that we can look at later in the year and short term goals glued to the outside of the box to remind us of our goals.

Thanks for reading!

The Weekly Ranum: Edition #5

Hello and welcome back!

Last week we decided, wrote about and chose our mentor or mentee for the year!

On Wednesday and Thursday we worked on a Google slide presentation introducing our mentor/mentee.

They included each other's favorite things (music, sports, class, activities, etc), their future career and college goals, and 10 random fun facts.

It was a great time for mentors and mentees to ask each other a bunch of questions and get to know each other even better. We did presentations on Friday which we will finish up on Tuesday.

Have a great week!