Spring is in the air

As of January PACE East is also pleased to be partnering with University of Denver’s Graduate School of Social Work as an internship site for first year student Maggie Crank. Maggie spends Mondays, Tuesdays, and Wednesdays in the PACE East classroom working with students. Her experience and knowledge of working with high-risk youth, as well as an ability to communicate with students and identify problematic traits has proved to be a great asset to the classroom. This has especially been shown when addressing both individual and group behavioral issues and how to resolve them. Maggie is also great at identifying the strengths that many of the PACE students have and coming up with recommendations as to how these strengths can be better put to use when they return to their schools. Apart from her in class contributions Maggie is focusing on developing our family wrap-around services.

In February the students in the PACE East classroom went on a field trip to the Rock Mountain Arsenal National Wildlife Refuge. This educational field trip insisted of a brief introduction to the Wildlife Refuge as well as a history of the area. The students got to explore some of the exhibits in the visitor center, which included a gigantic stuffed bison, as well as a live snake. A couple of the students even dressed up in some of the replica clothes on display that illustrated what the farmers that used to live on the property wore. Finally the trip concluded with a guided animal viewing tour around the refuge, with each student being provide a pamphlet that showed some of the animals to be identified and binoculars to find them. Some of the animals seen were: bald eagles, hawks, bison, deer, rabbits, coyotes, and prairie dogs. The students really enjoyed the trip, and seemed to learn quite a bit from the very insightful tour guide.  

 

 

Less than two months ago the PACE classrooms had the good fortune to start up a new partnership with Food Bank of the Rockies. Food Bank of the Rockies is a hunger relief organization that provides food to people in need. This essential partnership is adding something that all of the PACE students will be taking advantage of a great deal, lunch! Every day the PACE students will be served a hot lunch, thanks to the great people at Food Bank of the Rockies. The partnership started the last week in February and although a couple of the students seemed a little unsure at first, after a couple of days they started showing a great admiration and liking of the food. Not only are the students getting lunch, it is a nutritious lunch, with the students drinking milk instead of soda and eating apples and oranges instead of potato chips.

Almost all the PACE students show an interest in sports, some like football, others volleyball or soccer and many of the students enjoy basketball. So when the opportunity came for a few of the PACE students to go and watch the Denver Nuggets play, they were eager to go. Students from both the West and East classrooms attended a game in March against the Atlanta Hawks. It was a lot of fun, and what made it even better was the presence of some of the youth mentors from the Mile High Youth Corps program. Once a student finishes at PACE they do no typically remain in contact with the MHYC mentors, so this opportunity allowed former PACE students and their mentors to catch up while enjoying the basketball game. Although a limited number of students were able to go, those that did showed great professionalism and seemed to really enjoy the trip.

Finally both PACE sites are looking forward to completing service learning trips in April to GrowHaus, located in Denver’s Elyria-Swansea neighborhood.  GrowHaus is a non-profit indoor farm committed to growing healthy communities through food accessibility and education.  PACE students will learn about food justice, social justice, as well as the scientific basics of growing food.

Happy Holidays!

With the school year rolling along and 2012 within view, both PACE classrooms are proud to inform you of some of the great stuff that has been happening in the past two months. Apart from our everyday character education and academic classroom activities, both PACE sites have enjoyed some great extra-curricular activities including field trips to: Regis University, S.O.S. and World Vision (with Mile High Youth Corps). PACE East has also had the opportunity to do some community service at the Montbello Recreation Center, cleaning up some of the garbage people had littered outside the building.

To complete our 2011 partnership with the pharmacy students from Regis University, each PACE classroom had the chance to go and see what life is like for the Regis students first hand. A group of Regis students led the PACE students on an extensive tour of the Regis campus, answering questions about what it is like in university and informing the PACE students about some of the activities they get to partake in at the university. The tour concluded at the pharmacy lab where the PACE students got to do some hands on activities, including: making Chap Stick and measuring pills (using M&M’s) and taking someone’s blood pressure. It really was a great educational field trip for the PACE students, who showed great interest and expressed a real liking of the activities and interaction with the Regis students.

PACE gives students an opportunity to have a second chance, to learn from past mistakes, and to create a successful path for themselves in school and in life. Six students from PACE East and West who took advantage of this second chance participated in an all day ski and snowboard trip to Vail through the SOS SnowCore program. The program promotes self-respect, positive relationships, social skills, and positive values all while participating in skiing or snowboarding.  Students were provided with all ski clothing and equipment necessary for their daylong lesson with a Vail instructor. Mid-day, students were treated to a hot lunch at the top of the mountain.  All six students, who had never snowboarded, felt confident and proud at the end of a challenging yet fun day.   PACE hopes to keep working with SOS to continue giving students the opportunity to expand their horizons and promote self-esteem.

The mentoring program that exists between PACE and Mile High Youth Corps has also continued in the past two months to great effect. However to augment our partnerships with MHYC, we have had the pleasure of going out and working with them and the non-profit organization World Vision doing service learning projects. World Vision is an international N.G.O. that supplies clothing, food and other supplies to people in need all around the world. The service learning projects that we have done and will continue doing in the coming months have included, sorting, preparing and boxing clothes as well as putting together HIV/AIDS kits to be shipped to the areas in need. This activity has proved to be great for the PACE students, who tend to do very well working side by side with the MHYC mentors and through showing a great level of empathy for the people they are helping.

We have been blessed with many holiday opportunities this season.  Many of our PACE students come from low-income families and the holidays can be a tough time of year when funds are tight.   Thanks to the King Soopers Toy Drive toy donations, students were able to select and wrap toys for themselves and their family members before students went on winter break.  This was a wonderful opportunity for students to experience and reflect on generosity and giving.

Finally PACE students had the chance to take advantage right before Christmas of a generous donation by the Salah family for children in need. Some students that had completed the PACE program successfully or were currently doing well in the program were selected to go on a shopping trip to buy shoes, coats, hats, and other warm clothes. The students that participated from both PACE sites did very well and showed a lot of gratitude and were especially happy that they were given the responsibility to choose things for themselves. Some of the students were also able to buy for younger siblings, and they did a fantastic job picking out warm clothes and shoes that their brothers and sisters will surely benefit from especially during some of the very cold winter days in Colorado. 

After a great 2011, we are looking forward very much to 2012 and the many challenges, as well as fun and educational moments that is has in store.   

A warm October greetings from the PACE crew!

The PACE classrooms have now been up and running for almost 2 months and we are proud to say that things are going great! This school year we are proud to again be working in partnership with both Mile High Youth Corps (MHYC) and students from Regis University.

The partnership with MHYC is being run similarly to in years past, allowing the PACE students and MHCY members to engage in educational activities for an hour a week. This unique opportunity allows the middle school PACE students to get a real look at the possible consequences if they do not modify their behavior positively. Some of the activities and games the students will partake in this year will include team building and life sharing. The activities are designed to be engaging and also to allow the students to express themselves and learn in different many ways.

This year the partnership with the Regis university students, will allow these pharmacy students to come into the PACE classroom and work with the PACE instructor teaching hands on health, science and nutrition lessons. These exciting activities and the mere presence of the Regis students in the PACE classrooms will be a breath of fresh air for the PACE students. The distinct backgrounds and experience that each of the Regis students offers the PACE classroom great creativity and allows the PACE students to participate in lessons and activities they would otherwise not get to participate in.

PACE is proud to be participating this winter in the Snowboard Outreach Society (http://www.sosoutreach.org/page/winter-1) program that takes underprivileged youth to the mountains to learn some core values and also how to snowboard. Both PACE classrooms will get to take 5 students that have shown great character, behavior and academic achievement for a full day’s activity including learning about self-respect, positive relationships, social skills, and positive values and culminating in snowboard lessons and some free time on the slopes. This great program will work as a positive form of motivation for some of the PACE students that will earn the right to participate in the program through achievement and hard work.

PACE West is pleased to be partnering with University of Denver’s Graduate School of Social Work as an internship site for first year student MacKenzie Andrews.  As PACE’s intern, MacKenzie is in the classroom and working with the students Mondays, Tuesdays, and Wednesdays.  Her experience as an Emergency Medical Technician and her previous work with high-risk youth add integral support to our students and their families.  This year, MacKenzie will be focusing on developing our family wrap-around services, as well as leading classes and connecting with youth one-on-one.  We are very excited to have her here! 

Welcome

Welcome to the PACE blog. We will be using this blog during the 2011-2012 school year so that we can update students, families, and schools on all of the great things we are doing at the program this year. We are very excited about the new opportunities this will provide for our program and the community.

Please take some time to look over all of our pages, which provide more information about the program and its goals. And check back often for updated PACE news, events, pictures, and more.

We would also love to hear from current students, past students, families, schools, and partners. Please feel free to contact us with feedback, comments and questions at our email: jareda@bgcmd.org

Youth Summits

PACE was lucky to participate in 2 youth summits this spring. Both sites took students to the Safe City Youth Summit on March 24th. The students enjoyed all of their sessions, and gained a lot from the experience. In addition, PACE had two instructors- Erica and Joe - present at the conference. They did a session on cooperation and group work. People in the session had to create and original invention from random items and create a 30 second infomercial for it. It was a lot of fun and the inventions were great!

Also, students at PACE East attended the National Beacon's Youth Conference on April 8th. It was put on by the Cole Beacons Program at Cole Arts and Sciences Academy, and included youth from Beacon's programs across the country. The students had a lot of fun and really enjoyed a day out of the classroom.

Joe also presented at this conference. He presented a lesson on incorporating media into teaching at the adult conference, and a lesson about transitioning into middle school at the youth conference. Both were extremely were received. Congratulations to Joe on putting together 2 amazing presentations.

We at PACE are glad to have so many great partners and great opportunities throughout the area!

Mile High Youth Corps Partnership

This year we are really excited to renew our partnership with Mile High Youth Corps. PACE students meet with MHYC students once a week for about an hour. They work together on character education, and the MHYC share their experiences with PACE students. It is a great opportunity for PACE students to make more lasting relationships with members of the community; it is also a good way to allow Corps members to reflect on their own experiences and, hopefully, help keep others from going down the same path. Our students look at the MHYC members as mentors, and they really look forward to their time with them every week.We will be posting pictures and details from our recent MHYC visits soon.