2019 Youthlinc Real Life Refugee Scholarship Winners Youthlinc is pleased to announce a new…
January at Real Life: Fabulous Field Trips!
Granite Park Junior High
Hey everyone! Katie Boonkrataung, Real Life Intern at Granite Park Junior High, here to give you an update on our programming this month!
This month we have been focusing on learning life skills. We started the month off with the “I am” lesson, a lesson that promotes self-empowerment and self-confidence! The lesson entails defining what art is and how it allows us to express our feelings. Each student was then provided with a list of words, and then asked to make a collage that represents themselves by cutting out the words that they think define them.
The next lessons that we taught were filling out a form and interview skills. Students learned important skills such as making sure to read all the directions before filling out an application, having a firm handshake when meeting an employer for the first time, and maintaining eye-contact while having a conversation.
Most recently, we had our time management lesson. Mentors and students were divided into teams and participated in group activities in a race to get the most points. Overall, it has been a fun and exciting time at Granite Park Junior High! Many friendships are being made and many life skills are being learned.
At the end of the month, we had our monthly service activity. Students and mentors made snowman pencils and wrote encouraging notes in notebooks for the younger students at other South Salt Lake Promise Sites. What I love about monthly service is that is a reminder of Youthlinc’s core motto, creating lifetime humanitarians! Service is always included in Real Life’s curriculum.
To top it all off, we paired with Highland High’s site and went on a field trip to the city library! Students and mentors participated in a scavenger hunt throughout the library. They found books, talked to librarians, and rode in glass elevators! We also went into the creativity lab and some students tested their screams in the new sound box. This month was service and fun filled!
PAL Central Park
The first week in January was Juan Diego’s week of service, so they were in charge of the teen program. Tuesday, we worked with the little kids while JD worked with the teens and it was so much fun! We did homework help and played simple classroom games with the kids. Today, we participated in JD’s service project with the teens — making friendship bracelets and cards for the patients at Primary Children’s Hospital.
This month we also did a service project/craft — making snowman pencils and writing notes to the younger children in the program. We had several new faces that day and the teens were very respectful and enthusiastic about participating in the project. Good fun for everyone!
At the end of the month, we had fun learning about and practicing job interviews on Tuesday. The teens did a great job role-playing interviews. After an hour of perfecting our skills, we all got together and played cards.
Highland High School
January was such a fun month for Real Life at Highland! We had incredible lessons (the first ones taught by the Peer Mentors!) on job and college readiness! The peer mentors and all the participants did an amazing job making these lessons incredibly fun and engaging! We all learned so much! It has been so much fun working together on lessons and homework help. All our peer mentors and participants finished out the quarter with great grades, and we are all ready to start term 3! Last week, we had the opportunity to go to the Salt Lake City Library and take a tour of the amazing facilities there! We all had such a blast doing the scavenger hunt and learning new things about the library. Everyone is bonding very well and we are thrilled to start February programming!
Evergreen Junior High
We have been looking forward to our snowshoeing field trip all month! Due to the crazy-awesome amount of snow we have been getting, our first field trip date had to be rescheduled. But not to worry! We still had an incredibly time up at Millcreek Canyon. We discovered how fun it is to be in the mountain, surrounded by the beautiful snow and scenery! We also got a healthy amount of exercise. How lucky are we to live so close to such beauty! We had so much fun!
Hser Ner Moo
Among their other life skills lessons, the students at Hser Ner Moo went on a library field trip this month! We went to the downtown Salt Lake City public library and challenged each other in a super fun scavenger hunt! It took us to all the different levels of the library so we could search for different fun facts about its construction and contents. We had a blast!
Scott School
For our service project this month we looked at serving our local community. We used craft materials to mow snowmen pencils and gave them to the elementary aged kids at Scott School. Our teens got creative and really enjoyed making the little kids happy by giving them a gift. It was a great way to emphasize how easy it is to serve right where you are!
Sunnyvale
Alyssa Whetstone here to give you an update on Sunnyvale Real Life programming! This last week, Sunnyvale had the wonderful opportunity to participate in the Juan Diego service week. On Monday, the Juan Diego students taught about working together as a team and communicating together. The teens had a lot of fun with the activity that was planned and had a lot of fun getting to know the students from Juan Diego.
On Tuesday, the teens had the opportunity to attend the Utah Jazz game. All of them said that they had a lot of fun at the game. The teens have been working so hard to be able to go and I am really glad that they enjoyed it.
On Wednesday, I was able to help one of the teens with his homework. His is still working on his English, but he was so determined to do well on the homework that he had. I think that this is awesome, because, even though he didn’t understand a lot of his homework, he really wanted to and he worked so hard to get it done.
Because the Juan Diego students were doing a lesson with the teens, we decided that the mentors would run an activity with the elementary kids. We made a cute valentine craft and did coloring pages with them. We also played games and just hung out with them. The elementary kids don’t know the Real Life mentors as well, so I think it was good that they got to spend some time with them and get to the people that they are seeing at Sunnyvale every week.
The mentors have really started to become great friends with the teens and many of them are making arrangements to volunteer at Sunnyvale twice a week, even on the days that Real Life is not there. This week has been a good one at Sunnyvale. Thank you to the students at Juan Diego who have helped make it such a great week!
At the end of the month, we had lessons on time management and interviewing skills. Some of the mentors also started teaching their lessons this month, and they did really well. The teens have been awesome at participating during the lessons and it is so much fun being able to go every week.
