Our personal successes: We actually had both school wide and individual successes.
Nataly - I took on the challenge of working on the website. Even though I didn't have much background, I didn't have internet at home, I would go to Mr. Voung who is a computer teacher and he helped me and Elena work on building the website. I also did the writing about Hidden Figures, I was very inspired and when my teacher brought an article from the LA Times, I wanted to put my thoughts on the website. Another thing I wrote about was the speaker my teacher brought to our Per. 3 class - Imelda Padilla. I leaned how to upload pictures from a cell phone to the website.
Karyssa - I joined Girlpower in the Spring and I was very successful at making posters, and I wrote and delivered the PA announcements for the Bottle Flip and Positive Memory Challenge. Elena - I learned how to work on the website with Nataly. I don't have any computer at home but I learned how to use the cell phone and put pictures on the website. . Now, we have replaced that paper sign with a sturdy vinyl indoor/outdoor sign that invites girls to consider joining.
Fatima - I learned how to speak to our principal for our group. When we had ideas I was the one who would talk to Mr. Ortega to find out what we could and couldn't do. Mr. Ortega was very nice and listened to our concerns, like when we wanted a place in the Main Office to put our GBLA sign we got at the kickoff. He kept asking us questions and made us think about what we were doing.
Our School Community Successes: See Outcome page for quantitative and qualitative data
I. Beautification. Our school looks better, teachers and students noticed us as we went around the school doing clean up around the campus and in the garden area, It was very dirty. One thing we discovered was that it wasn't only the students who made a mess but it was squirrels that were taking food out of the trash cans and hiding them in the landscaping where it was overgrown!!! So we realized that keeping our campus clean wasn't just about us kids but also that the animals are kinda giving us kids a bad reputation! It was something that helped us to look closer at the problem of reputation. The campus aides and security told us that they appreciated us cleaning up the campus.
II. Bottle Flip Challenge - this challenge came from the survey. It's true that there are actually a lot of things to do at Sepulveda but the kids who get into trouble don't want to do them. So, we saw that it was the kids who are a problem in the class room (who would flip a bottle and that would be a problem) so we thought that by giving those kids something fun that they like to do, a challenge that would interest them and keep them from doing bad things at lunch time. Well, it worked!! About 150 kids participated and hung out around the outdoor stage because we had a speaker and microphone and Rachel created music playlist that didn't have any bad words in the songs. The songs were liked and kids were singing along. They also loved the candy prizes. We had those large pix sticks that everyone wanted. We started the Challenge on a Wed. and continued to the following Tuesday. In the first week we were so excited and surprised that so many kids were interested that we forgot to take pictures! we only took them on the last 2 days, but we also know that the yearbok students came and took pictures so we will be looking our our Bottle Flip Challenge in our school yearbook. How cool is that? This is another step to building back our reputation and something in our yearbook that will be interesting to the kids who don't participate in the other activities we already have.
III. Positive Memory Challenge, which we accomplished in a week was well liked. We got over 70 responses. What was cool about this was that we did it the week of Open House and we were able to collect positive memories from alumni and parents. We were surprised to discover that many parents had attended our school!! We think that we will be able to figure out how to get parents to spread the word about the good things about our school too. A cool thing that Nataly did was get our website linked to the student section of our school website and we now have a comment section on our website so we can continue to get data that we can use to promote a better outlook of our school.