Scholars and Coaches Build Bonds of Trust in ALL In Pilot

ALL In is designed to be a student-led exercise, and so the coaches admittedly had to resist some of their natural inclinations to take charge.  They commentedthat the trainings by notable leaders like best-selling author and experiential learning expert Esther Wojcicki and motivational interviewing practitioner Dr. Sam McQuillin, among others, were very helpful in this regard.   

“My tendency is to jump in and fix things, especially with my own nieces and nephews,” Mouton said.  “I found myself holding back intentionally, and the experience caused me to really listen more effectively.”  

Johnson, who teamed up with Boys Hope Girls Hope of Detroit Board Member Rob Hughes as a coach, noted that “both of us as adults had some challenges letting go of that rigid form of how we expected things to be. Then, we noted that our scholars were communicating more in the chat box, and things went smoother when we leaned into that.”

Ann Sheehy, residential counselor, Boys Hope Girls Hope of Southern California, normally works with high schoolers but coached a group of middle-schoolers.  “The experience taught me a lot of how to meet the scholars on their level — to connect where they are at.”

Despite the challenges presented by the pandemic, the teams were able to conduct about a dozen creative virtual social justice projects.

Alysa’s team wrote a poem, “Decades of Discrimination,” that focused on racism in the workplace.  “We interviewed family members and close friends, starting with our grandparents and ending with our generation,” Alysa said. “By interviewing my dad, I learned about some of his experiences that I wasn’t aware of before.” 

Green’s group researched a senior home in the Bay Area and got their authorization to accept letters of encouragement to both the elderly residents and healthcare workers.

“We wanted to acknowledge these are people who may not be able to see their families a lot and let the health care workers know that they are appreciated.”

The project undertaken by Grace’s group delved into issues of food insecurity that have been exacerbated by the pandemic.  “During these hard times, a lot of people are losing their jobs and don’t have enough money to pay for food, much less bills or rent.”  In addition to helping out a local food bank, she and fellow team members, including scholars from Esperanza Juvenil in Guatemala, created an educational slide deck about how COVID has impacted food and nutrition for families around the globe.  

Yoshua and his team members focused on being environmentally conscious at this challenging time.  His team encouraged the use of reusable masks as an alternative to disposable ones that can add to pollution of our oceans.”  Yoshua explained, “Everyone made masks and then did a presentation about it that was compiled into a video.”