Welcome back to my third week of working as an intern at the CUCE-NYC CHAT Initiative! This week was mostly filled with preparations to teach the group leaders the CHFFF course through Zoom this Thursday and Friday, as well as the teen leaders in-person in the following weeks. For instance, we organized and finalized our spreadsheet of food and supplies to be ordered for teen training, which required us to scrutinize the ingredients in our selected products. Additionally, we created a slideshow of various difficult classroom scenarios that would encourage an open discussion of facilitation skills for our meetings with the group leads and teens. Other preparations for our lesson include printing and laminating necessary posters and handouts, as well as creating Feedback Forms for the group leaders, teens, and interns to assess how to improve the CHAT initiative in terms of our lessons, the CHFFF curriculum, communication, etc… 

Overall, our lessons with the Group Leaders were successful, with Eda and I teaching lessons 3 and 4 on Thursday and finishing lessons 5 and 6 on Friday! The Group Leaders really enjoyed our scenario-based facilitation skills activity, and we even learned some techniques from them to maintain a balance in the classroom—-while we encourage the youths to have fun during our activities, it is important to maintain a focused environment during our lesson time. To support this, some group leaders suggested their technique of “Group Silence,” where clapping three times can catch the class’s attention and bring other youths to clap along and keep their undivided attention to the teacher. In terms of our class organization, we also plan to include a more structured lesson session after activities and lunch breaks to refocus the class as well. Not to mention, the referral to ground rules, created by the students themselves on the first day of class, will also be helpful to organize the classroom. Overall, I can’t wait to move towards Teen Training Week next!