The Answer - A blog about Education, Preparation, and Commitment.

YES Prep Students Work with Local Artist GONZO247 to create Graffiti

March 29, 2011 by Jeremy Jones

YES Prep Southeast is bringing street art/graffiti into the lives of our students. Since January, students have been hard at work on a bench to help raise money for a summer opportunity. Students were 100% invested in this project and worked intently for one month. The process was encouraged by their peers and the overall support for street art within the Wizard family.

Presenting the idea of graffiti to students was a challenge:

• What kind of graffiti?
• How will the overall composition work?
• Will each side of our bench be related?

Through a simple process, students decided that the bench should represent Houston. Students created their own idea of how to represent their home city. They chose a side and began.

Each side took on a life of its own. With a diverse group

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YES Prep Brays Oaks Students Learn West African Culture from American Field Service Country Director

March 09, 2011 by Sarah Straub

"So... if I were a part of the Akan tribe, my name would be Wednesday?" asked one of Sarah Straub's 6th grade students.

Kwame Otchere, Country Director for American Field Service (AFS) in Ghana, came to YES Prep Brays Oaks to talk to our students about West African culture and traditions. "Kwame" means "Boy Who Was Born on Saturday" and the tradition is for each member of the Akan to receive three names: 1) The Day of the Week When They Were Born, 2) A Strong Family Name, and 3) A Name That Shows Their Role. "Otchere" means "warrior" and Kwame said that this was because he has been fighting his whole life for cross cultural understanding.

Kwame taught us about his life in Ghana and even Google-earthed his home in Accra. He said he painted his roof blue so that he could always see

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If you are considering teaching right out of college, read this first

February 24, 2011 by Jeremy Jones

Below is an email exchange between myself and a prospective teacher from my Alma Mater Vanderbilt University.  I thought that it was such a great question and that many other prospective teachers graduating from college might have the same fears and hesitations about what classroom life could be like.  I wanted to share with other people who may or may not be interested in helping us prepare more low-income students from Houston for college graduation.

My first question is, you mentioned that you were having a first-year teacher crisis when you came up here looking at Peabody: how did you get through it, why did you stay?

This is the best question of all time. I was definitely feeling the pressure, weight, and intense stress of being a first-year teacher with no formal training.

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Any Given Monday: Student Support Counseling at YES Prep

February 21, 2011 by Hope Pacheco

On any given Monday, you will find a Student Support Counselor on every YES Prep campus. On some campuses, you may even find two, and if a campus is lucky, they might even have a social work intern. You will notice the SSC right away. They may be in the front office listening to an upset parent; they may be in the cafeteria talking to the students on RISE (our middle school discipline system); they may be in the hallway comforting a crying student; they may be making an announcement during morning meeting about Black History Month or Random Acts of Kindness Week.  They may be partnering with their Grade Level Chair about a student of concern or they just might be teaching a class. On any given Monday, there are twelve full-time Student Support Counselors walking the halls of YES Prep

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YES Prep Brays Oaks Students Ask: Why don’t Jewish People Eat Pork?

January 31, 2011 by Sarah Straub

Why don’t Jewish people eat pork? How did Siddhartha sit forever without eating? Is Shiva evil or just a guardian for people? These questions are questions that I remember having when I was learning about religion – in college. Imagine how impressed I was to hear questions like these coming from the mouths of 6th graders?

My advice in college had been to travel to all of these different places of worship and get the story from people who actually lived, breathed and practiced their religions. Knowing how well it worked for me, I decided to plan the best field trip ever!

We began by going to a mosque where we were privileged enough for several students to be able to climb the ornately carved staircase up to wear the imam delivers his message. We listened to the imam sing the call to

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