Speaker: Melvin Kaska
How will the social and emotional learning books you requested benefit your students and/or classroom?
Melvin Kaska: Hi, my name is Melvin Kaska and I'm the Post-Secondary Educational Liaison at ACE. For the past two years, I have had the opportunity to teach high school ThinkGive class here at ACE. The social and emotional learning books that we requested, I have not used this year but have plans of using it next fall or this fall with my new high school ThinkGive class.
What impact does ThinkGive have at your organization or in your classroom?
Melvin Kaska: My ThinkGive class this year went very well, even with the arrival of our new Haitian family that joined us in January. Most of the students in my high school class felt like they could relate to the topics and lesson plans discussed in class. After the lesson plan, some of the students would go out into the community and practice what we talked about, either stand up for someone that's being bullied, see something that's not right and notify someone that something's not right. Go home, help out their mom or their parents take care of their siblings, pick up at home, give rides to friends that need rides, or even some of our students will fill in for a coworker at work that needs to attend a family event or needs to attend a major event and can't find coverage. Most of our students will stand up for them and be like, "Oh, I'll take your hours for today so you could do whatever you have to do." And also at ACE, our high school student took on the leadership role to make sure that the dining room is clean after lunch, to make sure that the students are not running in the hallway, that they're in the right class that they're supposed to be, and also taking out the trash and sweeping the building.
Please share how a student(s) was impacted by participating in ThinkGive. If possible, highlight examples of growth in character, confidence
Melvin Kaska: After participating in my ThinkGive class, my students are now able to go out into their own community and make an impact on someone else's life. For example, stand up for someone that's being bullied or giving to someone that don't have. What I mean by that is, one of my students was out one day shopping or buying something and realized that someone didn't have enough change or money to purchase what they wanted to buy and decided to pay off the balance for them.
.png){kind=logo}