April's Expectations and Goals

Hi everyone! As you know, my name is April. I'm very excited to be working with all of you. I was very impressed by your application essays; you should be proud of yourself for the hard work that you clearly put into your essays.

For this class, I expect everyone to be present everday. Though we did not have perfect attendance no the first day, everyone that did show up was very emotionally and mentally present. I look forward to your positive attitutes each class day. I hope that each student will contribute to the various topics of the day by having done the readings, coming to class prepared with a journal reflection of the reading, and 2 questions that they want to ask their classmates about what they learned. Most importantly, I want students to be able to open up and share their personal experiences with the group so that we can learn how these issues are affecting us personally and in our own communities. Judging by your personal stories today, I expect you all to have a lot to contribute to teach class topic. I noticed that each and every one of your are eloquent speakers, so I expect you all to do an amazing and inspirational job in your presentations.

My expectations for myself include: being able to bring my personal experiences to the table; to become a mentor that you all can trust and turn to for any issues related or unrelated to this class; and to find engaging and helpful facilitation methods that best suit your needs.

The topics that we will cover in this class (unless students mention a topic in their blog post that many find particularly interesting and feasable) are:
-School Funding
-Carbon emissions in Richmond
-The Necessity (and Lack of) Fresh Foods in Urban Environments
-Homelessness
-Public Transportation
-Water Conservation and Distribution
-Criminalization of Youth

I look forward to getting to know you all throughout the next couple of weeks!

-April