Welcome to the New Year and Happy Lunar New Year,

As we return back to our respective fields, I am reminded of the wonderful skills we bring as a whole whether we're directly serving students and teachers or creating processes and strategies on how our team can better navigate complexities in their day-to-day. I hope we can continue to reach out and take care of each other as needed and that we're able to find the little things that feed our spirit in soul. This is especially apparent as we near February and in honor of Black History Month, we can lean on love and care to our community as Dr. King would say, "I have decided to stick with love. Hate is too great a burden to bear."

This newsletter will highlight some of the stories from December and upcoming opportunities throughout the beginning weeks of 2023.

Warmly,

Jennie & GEAR UP Team

---

The quote for this week to leave folks inspired is from the 2021-22 report where Mentors spoke about their relationship with their Partner Teacher.

“I saw identities be respected and my partner teachers used this to meet their students where they were at, instead of just assuming.”

In December 2022, we worked with 22 teachers to survey 881 students across 6 PPS High Schools—Jefferson, Roosevelt, McDaniel, Grant, Franklin, & Benson. Our team is almost done analyzing all of the data, and we are excited to be in the final stretch of finalizing the Learning Environment Dashboards. Once those are complete, TOSAs will be reviewing the dashboards with educators, and we will also be able to share out some big-picture takeaways.

In the meantime, we wanted to share a word cloud of some of the "I Am" statements. Above are the responses from 142 ELL students across the aforementioned six high schools where we administered the survey. The following statements are how they responded when asked to complete the very open-ended prompt, "I am..."

If you are interested in seeing what other types of questions were asked on the survey, you can view a paper copy of the Student Voice Survey here!

As we returned from break, the GEAR UP team gathered for our second summit of the academic school year. This summit was focused on reviewing some data from the Student Survey we administered before winter break. The focus of these data was on a portion of the survey where it prompts students to answer, "I AM" and "I AM NOT" and in particular our team looked at the overarching themes of students expressing areas around mental health. Our team strategized ways our program and our staff can combat and address some of these pressing issues impacting our students' lives.

Near Peer Mentor and Partner Teacher Fall Reflection Survey: seeking feedback and learning about our stakeholder's experiences is a practice we've committed ourselves to in order to improve. We launched the survey in early January in hopes to review and share results back out in February. If you are interested in reviewing previous reports, you can read the Partner Teacher report here.

Shadowing Opportunity: we're hosting Shadowing Opportunities for our new mentors this year so they can observe and follow current mentors in their work. These will take place in the month of January and February!

Intentional College and Career Exposure Workshops in Classrooms: I am sharing the services report that I had in my previous newsletter. Our program goal is to support mentors in developing quality workshops around college and career readiness in collaboration with their school-based College Coordinator and classroom teachers so that we can continue to infuse classrooms with exposure to post-secondary options. The service hours include the combined service categories below:

• Mentoring (classroom enrichment)

• Financial Aid Counseling/Advising

• Support Services

• Educational Field Trips

• Advising/Academic Planning

• College Visits

• Partner Teachers: We appreciate and are excited to work with the Partner Teachers who administered the Student Survey in their classes. Your dedication to learning more about how your students experience the classroom and to allowing our program to understand how to tailor mentor training and services to better support your practice is commendable. - GU Team
• During GEAR UP's second team summit of the school year, the evaluation team hadn't planned on leading an interactive activity to submerge everyone in student voice data, but after reading through all 881 student responses to the "I Am" and "I Am Not" statements (of which there were 5 each for a total of 10 statements per student), AmeriCorps member Savanna and Community Researcher Wendy felt strongly that we needed to center our work at the summit on the concerns students were sharing. Their passion for this work and commitment to students' voices is admirable and inspiring, and they did a fantastic job leading the team in data inquiry! I'm so grateful to have them on our team. - Jessaca
• Near Peer Mentors - we appreciate and want to love on you as you balance your college schedules, and required commitments based on programs and engage in this HEART work that doesn't just end when you clock out. As part-time employees, we know how difficult it is to balance it all and still show up, so we hope you had a restful break and are tending to your mental health as needed - NPM Team

January 23-27 (All week) - Finals Week for PPS Students
January 27 (Friday) - Mentor Bimonthly Training: Behavior Modification & Mentor Service Tracking And Reporting
January 31 (Tuesday) - Akash's Birthday 🎂
February 1 (Wednesday) - First Day of Black History Month
February 3 (Friday) - Jonathan P's Birthday 🎂
February 6 (Monday) - Dat's Birthday 🎂
February 13-15 (Monday-Weds.) - GEAR UP NCCEP Virtual Conference
February 17 (Friday) - Embedded PD Day (No School)
February 20 (Monday) - President's Day/HOLIDAY (No School)
February 22 (Wednesday) - NW Youth Careers Expo

All Mentors

NPM Public Folder 2022-23

NPM Policy & Procedure Manual

***General Resources***

• Feedback Circles: a tool on how to provide feedback to your peers and colleagues
• Avoiding Racial Equity Detours
• Upcoming Event: Black Liberation in Higher Ed. Teach-in - Virtual Racial Justice Teach-In in honor of the legacy and work of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. that is taking place on Jan. 28th, 10am-3:30pm on Zoom. Event registration link (graphic above)

--

Picture Credits:

1. Group photo of the team posing inside of Alberta House behind from art framed photos (LSM)
2. Graphic of I AM and I AM NOT responses from students (JW)
3. Mentor Jonathan and AmeriCorps member Simone(JC)
4. Community Researcher Wendy & BUILD Parent Organizer Jamie (JC)
5. Mentor Litzy and Ashley (JC)
6. Lead Evaluator Jessaca (JC)
7. Graphic of school-specific updates of services and students served for Sept.-Nov. 2022 (JC)
8. Graphic of Dr. King for the Black Liberation in Higher Ed. Teach-in Event (CCO)

Jennie Cha (she/her)

Program Supervisor | PPS | HS Academics

Monday Office Hours 1-2pm: meeting link

Thursday Office Hours 11-12pm: meeting link

AmeriCorps Members

• Simone Frison | sifrison@pps.net
• Maria Felix-Pedro | mafelixpedro@pps.net
• Rakiyah Perry | rperry2@pps.net

Email: jcha@pps.net
Website: https://www.pps.net/Page/14862
Location: 501 N. Dixon St Portland, OR 97227
Phone: 9716789577
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100009266612916
Twitter: @gearuppps