Jessica Spinosa

“At KECSS, we have a vibrant advisory program, in which teachers build strong relationships with their advisory group throughout grades 6–8. As a result of the teacher-student rapport building in advisory, some of our female middle school students have opened up about personal and interpersonal strife and self-esteem issues they have been experiencing. To tackle this, we will create a young female student empowerment group, 'Girl Go-Getters', where our at-risk female students will engage in activities to enhance their resilience and self-confidence: setting and tracking goals to reflect on their progress in our early college program, engaging in mindfulness activities to manage stress and learning to practice self-care to build confidence. To create a strong program for our girls, we will bring in guest speakers, hold workshops, organize outings to develop camaraderie and purchase the materials and resources we will need to bring the program to life – journals, vision boards, yoga mats, etc. We hope that, as a result of this grant, we will be able to continue offering a similar program to new groups of girls each year, surveying each cohort to make sure we are meeting the needs of our female students, lifting them up and helping them to become confident, successful, go-getters.”