Friday
I started my morning at Esperanza working on what I had been doing for the last few days, my list of businesses, organizations, and churches in the area. I had finished adding new places to the list the day before, and now I just had to decide which places I would go to with Melissa and which places another group would go to. Even between the two groups, we probably will not get to all the places on my list because there are more than 100. It was very helpful for me to pick about 20 off the list of all our places to try to go to on Monday. Hopefully, I will have the opportunity to visit them all and leave marketing materials for Esperanza.
In the afternoon, I switched my focus to curriculum again. I took some time to go through a book they had and do a little research on the ASPIRA program which the curriculum for the High School Youth Leadership Program is based off of. ASPIRA means aspire in Spanish, which is the heart of the program. The program was developed in Puerto Rico to help combat high dropout rates and poor educational performance by much of Puerto Rico's youth, through the teaching of leadership skills.
With that mind, I began looking through the curriculum for the year for the High School Youth Leadership Program and the lessons and materials that are used. I only got through a few lessons because there are a lot of them, but I tried to keep not only the ASPIRA program in mind, but also my own list of traits and activities that make a good leader, while I was taking notes on the lessons. There were some places where I suggested making changes that I thought might make things more interesting for the students or better accomplish the goal for the lesson. I hope that Melissa can incorporate some of my ideas in her curriculum for the next year.
The ASPIRA program sounds genius, and I'm really jealous you had the chance to work with it and look at possible changes to enhance the effectiveness of the program. What I think is really interesting, though, and what I couldn't stop thinking about the entire time I was reading your article, was how incredibly debate could be integrated into the program. Now I'm assuming that ASPIRA doesn't have a debate component, maybe they do, but the opportunity for students to take positions on issues and then have to voice their beliefs would do wonders to their confidence. As you know, (Megan, Captain of Congressional Debate) there are a number of leadership opportunities built into the debate world. Even just getting a kid to stand up and be confident in what they are saying shows an incredible amount of leadership. I wish I spoke Spanish, because I think it'd be great to go into some of the schools that have a higher prevalence of Spanish speakers, and create debate programs. Starting of course in Spanish, and then potentially moving into English to help proficiency skills, I think it would be a great way to keep students engaged and involved.
ReplyDeleteI think it was a great idea to have you look at the curriculum for the students. As a senior in high school you have had enough experiences in the classroom (and outside of it) to understand what really works with kids our age. I bet your suggestions and changes will prove to be very useful for the program. :)
ReplyDeleteOn another note, I absolutely agree with Will's suggestion. It just seems like the perfect activity because of its components. I know the reversed idea (on a smaller scale) was very useful in AP Spanish. Debating in Spanish while I was trying to learn it really helped my language skills in all four areas- speaking, reading, listening, and writing- because of everything a debate involves.