Late Program Update from Feb. 25th....

Hello!

I wanted to update everyone on my job and the programs I run. I work in Antoa at the Antoa SHS and JHS schools running two. The one at the SHS is a girl's leadership program that meets once a week on Monday and then the tutoring peer to peer program that meets on Tuesdays and Thursday.

Girl's Leadership Program (GLP):

The program has been good. We have had 3 sessions all focusing on self esteem and goal setting. The girls are great, but they have been having some serious issues with showing up on time. Which has been frustrating because we start at 3:30, and the longer it takes them to get to the classroom, the longer I stay and prolong my eating dinner...food problems.

But it is all around good. I work with a local Ghana woman named Grace and Ann (Expo staff) running the program and all the girls seem like they are enjoying it. We voted on a club name and we are now called, "Girl's Generation: Leadership is Power." Our second session was a little crazy because about 10 minutes on a huge rain storm came through and I had to push the girl's close together and scream so they could hear me over the rain crashing through the open window. Eventually it passed, but it was crazy for a few.

All in all though, the girl's are a great group and I want to do good by them. I am trying to connect with Mount Holyoke people in the Ghana area and see maybe if they would talk to my girl's. Or even trying to connect them with St. Joseph's Academy so they can see a different side of the world and life.

Tutoring

I feel like I have good days and bad days with tutoring. For the most part, the students do well in their small groups with the tutors. It is the large time that they are with me that I find annoying. I pass out snack to the students while they do a writing prompt. Sometimes it is great, other times it is annoying because students take the snack and then leave. I have talked to them multiple times, and then yesterday I was getting so annoyed because almost a whole group wanted to walk out and I stopped handing out snack and just bitched to them that when they do that, they are stealing from me and are essentially a thief. Of course I said that I know that they are good students and are not thieves, but they needed to act that way and not goof off and think they can just leave. It makes me distrustful and it angers me because the majority of the group does well. But is is enough students in the program that it can cause an issue with things.

There are a few things that I am looking to tweek to help with some of the issues that I have been experiencing. I am going to try and incentive good behavior all the time by having "Ms. Taylor" time. As well, I am going to have midterm awards for attendance and such. Hopefully that will place things in a more positive direction. .

The tutors are great though. There are 1 or 2 students that I am going to have to talk to about making sure that they just don't do lecture style teaching, but all around they are good kids.

But yea, that is my program in a nutshell. I will post some picture next time I remember to upload them :/

Paz,

Chustz

Me and Ora on the stoop in front of Fad's place