Alpha Academy - Positive Behaviors and Relationships

In our January session, we covered the critical topic of Positive behavior and relationships, led by Bro. Jamaal Whaley and Bro. Emmanuel Faulkner. We opened the session with an icebreaker on Kwanzaa, explaining the history of the celebration, what the days of Kwanzaa represent, and their associated principles. We were surprised to see how many young men know about and celebrate Kwanzaa!! Starting the session, we learned about stereotypes and what they are, discussed common stereotypes, and things we can do to assist with breaking the negative ones. The young men were very involved and had plenty of feedback and suggestions.

After the first part of the presentation, we split the young men by age group. We discussed consent and relationships with women/girls for middle and high schoolers. We stressed the importance of understanding that "No means No" and gave many examples of situations; we were pleased that the young men were engaged and participated heavily.

We focused on showing respect to women in their families and their female teachers for the elementary schoolers.

Following the presentations, we continued working on our Pinewood Derby Car project. We helped the young men finalize their concepts and assist with the creation of concept sketches for those who did not start one in December's session. We collected all the sketches and are now ready to move on to the next step, which is cutting the profiles out of the pinewood blocks.

We feel January's session was very impactful. Most importantly, the topics were grasped by the young men who attended the session due to their consistent participation from the beginning to the end.