Reflections

This last week Arielle and I wanted to focus on reflecting on our event and making thank-you cards to all the classrooms for participating. We wanted to get each student's thoughts on the event on video so Arielle and I split up. I did the video recording and she did the thank-you's with the students.

I'm not exactly sure how it all went on Arielle's end, but asking the students about the event, and eventually about what they have learned so far about Public Achievement and being active in their community was a lot of fun. It was kind of noisy out in the hallway, but otherwise it went well.

Before we split into groups we really quickly debriefed with each other about the event and tried to recap some of it for the two that couldn't make it to the event on Thursday. One of our students had gotten suspended and didn't even realize he had missed the event until our meeting on Wednesday. He was very very upset and withdrew from the group. I went to talk to him because he needed to realize that even though he missed the event he still had a huge part in planning it and getting ready for it. The public achievement group wasn't all about the one event or just the solution. The group was about learning what it meant to be active in their community and how to do the things necessary to leading up to events or solutions. He missed the event and that was a bummer, but he still had contributed a lot and could continue to contribute a lot. He went on a walk to cool off and regain his composure, and then he joined us. I made up some special questions just for him to reflect on planning and meeting with the principle. I think that made him feel better.

Once again I'm impressed on what some of these kids think and say! They have so much going on inside their brains, and it's so easy to just think they don't care or think about things! Man, am I wrong. I'm excited about what they are taking in and learning, but also about what they are speaking out! We didn't get to fully reflect together as a group, so we'll probably do a little bit more of that next week. We also plan on bringing Praxis full circle and going over the Core Concepts that we introduced at the beginning of the semester, and looking at how we saw them play out during our time together.

So excited, and kind of sad for the last few weeks!!

These kids are great, and I'm going to miss them a ton.