This past month at Boyd, we have seen such a change in the girls. There was a noticeable difference in how comfortable and open they became around us. They began to talk about some of the things happening in their home lives and the different things they wish would happen in their lives. The last day with them was hard. Watching this group of girls grow from the beginning of the year to now was amazing. Realizing how much they truly trust us and want us there made it difficult to tell them it was the last time we would be working with them. We are excited to see everything these girls accomplish as they move on to new grades and new schools and hope that everything we have done with them helps them set and achieve new goals for themselves.
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This month at Boyd was a lot like the last. We have continued to have lunch with our girls each week and look forward to seeing them when we go. The girls have started to become more open and comfortable with us on a one-on-one basis and give us a better look into their lives. We are beginning to plan the end of the year celebration that we want to have for the girls as a reward for all their hard work this year. We look forward to our last month with them and for everything it has to hold.
Our first month back at Boyd from Christmas was a lot different than how we started. Each of us has more responsibility than we had first semester; we are now the ones leading the girls on our own. This means we have to come up with our own projects and lead our own small group. We each meet on different days during different lunch shifts, so we make sure to have as many of the girls join us as we can. Working with the girls individually has made us closer to them and allowed them to open up to us even more. We are excited that we are able to make a bigger impact on these girls and give them someone to depend on each week. By continuing our project, we have been able to see a difference in the ease and comfort of the girls when they are around us and are excited to keep seeing that as we continue on with our project.
This month, we continued meeting the group of girls. This group has grown in number, but is still small enough we are able to make connections. The more we meet with these girls, the more we realize how lucky our lives have been. This group has gone through so much and each of these girls has a different experience they have been through. They are opening up to us and sharing more information than we imagined they would. Each week, the counselor has a project for us to do. Each of these projects involves the girls writing about different things in their life that they think about themselves. One of the projects we did was us drawing a house. On the house we drew things like a chimney, flag pole, door, etc. With these different items, we wrote things like what we wanted to leave our life, what we wanted people to know about ourselves, and what we like to do to when we get stressed, scared, or mad. After writing all of this information down, we got in a big group and if they wanted to, discussed some of the information that they wrote. Some girls say small things about themselves, but others express deeper and more meaningful things in their lives. This has allowed us to gain more information about what goes on in the lives of these girls. Though we’ve only worked with them for a small amount of time, we have all learned so much about ourselves, our community, and the future leaders of society.
This month at Boyd, we continued to work at the garden like we had been doing in September. It allowed us to grow an even stronger relationship with the children we worked with as they continued to see us each week. This month, we also finally got to start our intended project with Boyd! Our supervisor is officially off maternity leave and wanted to get started with our group as soon as possible. We worked with a group of six girls this previous Monday, but the total amount will be eight. This group was created with the intention of us being able to share things and create healthy and stable relationships without the fear of other people knowing or being abandoned. This will also raise their self-esteem levels. We are hoping that once the girls grow to know us, they will be willing to open up more and express the things they are going through/have been through. We will be working with this group of girls every Monday at noon and are already excited about the connections we have made!
Our group has chosen to work with Boyd Elementary. So far we have been making weekly visits to a community garden with the kindergarten and first grade classes. Through this we have been able to start with our initial project idea, which is to form relationships with the kiddos and becoming a constant in their lives. We have each personally seen progress with the kids in our weekly groups. Our original plan was to work with the school counselor to help give extra support and attention to the kids who need it the most. Once our supervisor is off of maternity leave, we will be able to do this but in the meantime we are creating connections and bonds everywhere we can make an impact! We also recently helped with the book fair, where we helped Boyd make around $1300 in sales, which will turn around to about $650 in Scholastic Bucks to be used to classroom books and resources for the teachers. Other than these activities, we have noticed another need which has been expressed by our advisor Andrea Battaglia, as well as the other members of PTA. Membership to PTA is free at Boyd to encourage parents to join, but many parents still have not even signed up for emails. This leaves families out of the loop regarding what is going on in their child or children's' school. The current PTA members expressed that an increase in membership is desired and could be beneficial to both the school and the students. They have requested our help in recruiting parents to be part of PTA. We have decided that we want to be able to help in as many areas of Boyd as possible, so we will be integrating this task into our weekly responsibilities of visiting and bonding with the kindergarten and first grade students. In the upcoming weeks we will be working with the current PTA to figure out a time to host a PTA recruitment event. We plan to use part of our budget to cover the costs of this event. Hopefully by educating the parents of the importance of staying in the loop with the school's activities we will be able to help increase parent participation as a whole.
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Bethany Bierman, Haley Olsen, Lydia Sharp, and Lauren Plunkett
Working with Boyd Elementary School as our Summit project for the 2017-2018 school year Archives
April 2018
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