End of Year Video
Club members describe their project, campaigns and workshops that they implemented throughout the year and reflect upon the impact they made in their school and local community.
Team Reflection
In our most recent club meeting, we reflected using the plus/minus/delta protocol.
We discussed our plusses (successes), minuses (areas for improvement) and deltas (things we would change). Our reflections revealed the following:
Through our involvement in this project, our team has become empowered, and worked toward empowering others by leading several campaigns and facilitating workshops.
We started as a group of girls on a bus to a field trip (to the Girls Build LA Summit) - now we are a team. We have built friendships, gained confidence, enhanced our communication skills, and became leaders on our campus. We have gained knowledge about topics that are significant and relevant to our peers and our community. We are agents of change!
However, our work is not yet done! We hope to continue reaching out to schools in our community to build relationships and share the knowledge that we gained. We have inspired a group of middle school students at Edison Middle School and a group of elementary school students at Miramonte Elementary School to form their own girls clubs. We began the process of connecting our clubs this year, with a plan to meet and collaborate once a month, but due to unforeseen circumstances, this plan could not be implemented. As a result, we plan to reconnect during the 2019-2020 school year.
One obstacle that we overcame this year was managing our busy schedules as scholars and student athletes. Lunch meetings were consistent and helpful, but often weren't long enough to accomplish all of our agenda items. Our monthly after school meetings allowed us to work for a more extended time, but some team members had conflicting responsibilities. To resolve this, we advocated for retreats planned within the school day by talking to our school principal and club sponsors. We were able to all come together to plan, collaborate on our projects, provide each other feedback, and support each other.
Another challenge was agreeing upon the format of our workshop. Some team members preferred to host the event in an auditorium, while others preferred to present in classrooms with participants rotating in small groups. Through consensus building and working with our host site, we were able to reach a consensus. Meanwhile, we also asked our school principal if we can present our workshops as a weekly series if a one-day off-campus event was not possible.
We invited students of all grade levels to participate. In our workshops, our target audience was mainly girls, however we remained inclusive of all students who were interested in attending. As an unintended result, we gained male allies to our women's empowerment movement! Male participants also benefited from or messages regarding self-affirmations and especially the importance of consent in healthy relationships!
Some areas of improvement that we identified and what we would do differently if we could do our project again are:
We discussed our plusses (successes), minuses (areas for improvement) and deltas (things we would change). Our reflections revealed the following:
Through our involvement in this project, our team has become empowered, and worked toward empowering others by leading several campaigns and facilitating workshops.
We started as a group of girls on a bus to a field trip (to the Girls Build LA Summit) - now we are a team. We have built friendships, gained confidence, enhanced our communication skills, and became leaders on our campus. We have gained knowledge about topics that are significant and relevant to our peers and our community. We are agents of change!
However, our work is not yet done! We hope to continue reaching out to schools in our community to build relationships and share the knowledge that we gained. We have inspired a group of middle school students at Edison Middle School and a group of elementary school students at Miramonte Elementary School to form their own girls clubs. We began the process of connecting our clubs this year, with a plan to meet and collaborate once a month, but due to unforeseen circumstances, this plan could not be implemented. As a result, we plan to reconnect during the 2019-2020 school year.
One obstacle that we overcame this year was managing our busy schedules as scholars and student athletes. Lunch meetings were consistent and helpful, but often weren't long enough to accomplish all of our agenda items. Our monthly after school meetings allowed us to work for a more extended time, but some team members had conflicting responsibilities. To resolve this, we advocated for retreats planned within the school day by talking to our school principal and club sponsors. We were able to all come together to plan, collaborate on our projects, provide each other feedback, and support each other.
Another challenge was agreeing upon the format of our workshop. Some team members preferred to host the event in an auditorium, while others preferred to present in classrooms with participants rotating in small groups. Through consensus building and working with our host site, we were able to reach a consensus. Meanwhile, we also asked our school principal if we can present our workshops as a weekly series if a one-day off-campus event was not possible.
We invited students of all grade levels to participate. In our workshops, our target audience was mainly girls, however we remained inclusive of all students who were interested in attending. As an unintended result, we gained male allies to our women's empowerment movement! Male participants also benefited from or messages regarding self-affirmations and especially the importance of consent in healthy relationships!
Some areas of improvement that we identified and what we would do differently if we could do our project again are:
- Utilizing our social media platforms more effectively
- Taking more photos and videos of our campaigns, events and workshops
- Planning our community outreach events for earlier in the year/semester - state testing was a source of scheduling conflicts with our neighborhood schools
- Updating our website more often
- Having more time for each workshop - our evaluations revealed that participants enjoyed them, but wanted longer presentations and more activities
- Keeping each other more accountable for assigned roles and responsibilities
- Ensuring all members remember to attend all meetings and to be informed of the team's decisions (Our Schoology group helped with this - but we could do better!)
- Acknowledging ourselves and each other for our accomplishments more often!
- Reaching out more to LA Promise and Girls Build LA for advice on our project