Mentoring Girls... To Learn and Give Back

As some of you may know, the 8th graders are currently doing SJCU work: Social Justice Cultural Understanding. In SJCU, we learn about different cultures, biases, and how to overcome and differentiate myths and facts. Previously in SJCU, we read excerpts from The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks By Rebecca Skloot. We read and annotated text, held class discussions, and did projects about Henrietta Lacks' story, and the racism involved.

On Wednesday, we started something new and exciting in SJCU! We are mentoring to 4th and 5th grade girls at Madrona K-8 school and Thurgood Marshall elementary school in areas of reading, writing and math. The goal of this is to empower these young girls, because this age is usually the time when girls start to not speak up in class, and teachers pay more attention to boys. Another goal, is for us to grow more culturally aware. The two schools are very culturally different rom us, and we'll learn from these girls about their own culture, as much as they will about us.

I think it will be a really great experience for us, as well as the girls. At Thurgood, we'll be doing more school work from all over, and at Madrona we will focus on writing and art. If you are a parent, ask your daughter what school she goes to!

Thanks for reading, and we will keep posting about how our experiences are going with empowering girls at these elementary schools. We will be continuing for the whole year, on every other Wednesday morning.

Thanks for reading!