A Vision for the Semester

Hard to believe that we wrapped up just the third week of school after such an eventful week - we began learning about the reproductive system, completed a mini-project that helped develop our observational skills, watched our former students exhibit their final products, and we met our student’s families during a packed open house. Oh, and participated Saturday morning in I Love a Clean San Diego’s 32nd annual beach clean-up at Border Field State Park.

Aside from all these activities we achieved something that we have never done. All students opted into taking biology, environmental science and humanities honors. Although every year every student receives an honors contract, we have never seen this type of positive peer pressure to motivate and challenge each other to tackle an honors curriculum. To support students with the honors curriculum I’ve set up Open Classroom every Tuesday from 3:45-5pm at our classroom. This is a space for students to make-up class work they missed if they were absent, refine their products to make them their best work, set-up a one-one discussion with me or come explore their passions in a learning environment. During this time I’m committed to supporting our students build skills that can help them be successful later in their education and career, such as: time management, communication and refinement.

Although this is exciting, the most memorable part of this week was listening to our former students perform their personal narratives and exhibit their artwork for our students at The Industry in Chula Vista. Alyssa, Arky, Tori and Sergio committed several hours of their day to once again read the work they created for The Power Within project. They didn’t miss a beat delivering their work! Everyone at The Industry, students, parents and professionals, were captivated by their journey to find their power. There were tears, laughter and loud applause. Our former students were joined by Max, Julia (instructor from So Say We All), Francisco and myself in performing our personal narratives of where our power comes from. Our new team left The Industry highly impressed by all the readers performance and with lots of questions of how they will be able to create powerful work too. In listening to their questions, I was reminded of how important it will be for me to build strong relationships with our students so they can be comfortable expressing themselves in ways they probably have never had to do before in front of an audience. I already know all our students are powerful, just like Sky!