Power & Control
- yessinstitutehr
- Mar 11, 2021
- 6 min read
Welcome back to Denver’s Westside!
In this blog, you will read about the following items:
Seniors Being Seniors: Leading by Example
What We Did -- The End Violence Project
Student Shoutout -- The Mentor Leadership Team & EVP & WLA
What’s Next -- Our Belief Systems and Our Love Cups
We have a lot to cover, so here we go.
1. Seniors Being Seniors
I am very proud to announce that 4 of my Senior ladies have been accepted to the University of Denver.
Mentor Leader: Naisett DeLeon
Mentor Leader: Viviana Torres
Senior Anahi Murrillo
Senior Yitzery Serna:
Awesome job, ladies. You earned a seat at the table. Now, go forth and use the opportunity!
2. What We Did:
It is my belief that we serve our students every day with proper, purposeful planning. This statement is supported by the month-long planning and execution of the End Violence Project as the Mentor Leadership Team along with the University of Colorado at Denver Center for Domestic Violence. February is Teen Dating Violence Awareness and Prevention month and its sole duty is to inform young adolescent teens about “red flags” and signs of abuse in romantic relationships.
The partnership had been in the books for quite some time, and when we finally came together, our team put together 2-week long facilitation. We presented to both middle school and high school students. I am very happy to report that we had a total of 300 people combined in both presentations. You can check them out below:
High School:
Middle School Advisory:
West Leadership Data Set:
One of the components that we wanted to gather was to expose our students to the reality that even among themselves, there are people who are in need of serious help from abusive relationships. There are people who do not know where or whom to turn to. The way we did that was by administering a survey for our students to take. We then released the results from the questionnaire and to Monica Bies's credit, we safely assumed that 1 in 3 adolescents experience physical, sexual, or emotional verbal abuse from a dating partner.
Here is a sample of the data set we extracted to present in this blog.
From the data, Monica Bies was able to come to this conclusion:
“The data reflects what we know from national surveys, which is that abuse in teen relationships is as prevalent in our own school as anywhere else. We also know that only 33% of youth report abuse so we can assume the statistics are higher. As a community, we have to work together to end violence.”
I believe that we can change this abuse happening within our community. It is an idea that seems to be overwhelming and an endless fight that may or may not ever stop. Still, the way that we approached it was through a 3-day lesson on power and control dynamics that we hope served their purpose in showing our students that in relationships, the person who has control over the other is clearly at an advantage.
Below, you can scroll through the lesson that we facilitated for our students.
Pt. II -- Power & Control
Part II of the lessons were aimed at covering the following three objectives:
What do power and control have to do with relationships?
Power and Control are the two driving factors in abusive relationships. It is a dynamic that is clearly present in the relationship, with very little to no open-communication and clear choices being made by two people. Rather, it is one person making the decisions for both people, clearly exhibiting signs of control of one person from the other.
Here is what we presented:
We asked our students what might these people who use power and control do to have the upper hand in the relationship. Here are some responses:
The power and control wheel represents the dynamics of abuse and how cultures perpetuate violence through norms, values, and institutions. Below are the 8 components that we believe are used to have abuse present in the relationship:
Using Intimidation
Using Emotional Abuse
Using Isolation
Minimizing, Denying, and blaming
Using Children to achieve an outcome
Using Male Privilege or any type of privilege that the other person does not have
Using Economic Abuse
Using Coercion and Threats
For purposes of this blog, you can scroll at your leisure about the rest of the lesson from that week.
Ultimately, we want to emphasize that our students and our community members are strong, willful people who are able to use what they learn in their own lives to pull themselves and their families of out harm's way. As an organization that strives to empower our students to succeed in anything they do, we wanted to arm them with tools and information that they can use to keep themselves in harmony with those that love them and truly want to be there with them, side by side.
For that reason, we also introduced the Equality Wheel, which aims at allowing our students to seek out these 8 components of equality within relationships. These relationship dynamics are just as important as being able to love someone else. Still, the purpose of why we did these lessons was to help fill the gap of knowledge in my community.
Here are the 8 components of what make an equal relationship:
Non-Threatening Behavior
Respect
Trust and Support
Honesty and Accountability
Responsible Parenting
Shared Responsibilities
Economic Partnerships
Negotiation and Fairness
The idea is that if we intervene at this level of education, we can increase the chances that our students will not fall into the traps of being in a one-way relationship where they are powerless over what happens to them. We want our students to have the means, ability, and confidence to navigate these challenges that will surely present themselves, but more importantly, we want to instill into all of our wonderful kids that they deserve to be in a happy, equal loving relationship that is full of trust, respect, honesty and unconditional love.
3. Shout-Outs: The Mentor Leadership Team & EVP & WLA
The biggest shout-out that I want to give is first and foremost to West Leadership Academy for being able to provide an opportunity to our wonderful team to showcase their skills in front of our community. We received a lot of praise and warm-energy from the community here, and I have to say, it does not go unnoticed. Thank you, from the students who showed up, to the staff that praised my team the entire time, to Admin for providing the opportunity to have a platform to inform. Thank you!
The second shout-out that I want to give is to Ms. Maria Limon and Ms. Monica Bies for being willing to partner with the team to put forth the presentation together. If we were the runners, they were our coaches guiding us through the challenges we saw put in front of us. We wouldn't have been able to do it without their guidance, and so, for that reason, we are better because of them. Thank you! You can find their contact information here:
And the third shout-out is to my hard-working team:
Naisett DeLeon
Viviana Torres
Michelle Vigil
Jasmine Brown
Coach Dino Abeyta
Monica Collins
Their work does not go unnoticed. They do not go unnoticed. They have pushed each other to reach new limits and they wholeheartedly did their job to the best of their abilities. We are better because of the passion they bring to the table, and not only that, we are in better hands with their leadership than without it.
Thank you, ladies and Coach. I could not do this without any one of you. We could not do this without each other, and that is why we are the team we are meant to be, united.
4. What's Next: Our Belief Systems and Our Love Cups
For next time, you will be reading about our belief systems and our love cups/restorative cups. In other words, you will get a look at what is stressing this generation of students and what exactly they are doing to re-charge themselves back up. And lastly, what our students believe about themselves and whether or not they are empowering themselves or limiting themselves.
Thank you for all the support you have provided. All of you who read, skim, or simply send us positive vibes are always appreciated. We will always need your support!
Happy reading, y'all.
Cowboys, Out.
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