On a rainy Tuesday night we drove over to Boushall Middle School for the first time to meet our class! After about 15 minutes of getting the children organized with their mentors, the director took us into a private room with our group of 16 kids! The director ensured us that we had been given the best scholars they could offer, and they are usually always on their best behavior. The children listened and were very respectful towards us the first five minutes alone with them, and then they became a little more comfortable and harder to control. Throughout the time we were there counselors would come in and check in on us and would settle the kids down. This was helpful for us because after about 10 minutes the kids would start to become very rambunctious again.

We started off by getting to know the group a little better by playing the name game where they match their name with an animal. Some of the kids were very willing and excited to participate, while others were shy or just didn’t feel like thinking of an animal. After the name game, we briefly discussed Shakespeare and if any of them knew who he was. All of the children had heard of him, but none of them knew who he was. We explained to them that he wrote many famous plays, such as Romeo and Juliet (they all knew that one). We also told them a little bit about how some movies, such as Lion King, are based off of Shakespeare plays. Next, we told them about the Shakespeare project and how they would be preforming act I of Mid Summer. They were all very excited and we were able to assign roles without any difficulty, giving every body their first choice. Overall, our first experience at Higher Achievement was enjoyable. The children seemed to be very excited about preforming and coming to the University. We will not be attending Higher Achievement next week because the children have an outside mentoring group coming in to work with them and we are preparing for midterms. We had a good start at Higher Achievement and I am looking forward to the working with them the rest of the semester!