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.
