6th Issue Stories

Itzel:
What drove me to improve so much is the ability to make my team better and progress – motivation is the key to success. [I’m driven] by my goals in life, I want to be proactive. I want people to be proud of me; I want my parents to be proud of me. I’m pretty humble and –

What I like about the tennis team altogether is that at times, when we go to tennis tournaments, we unite – we stick together and encourage each other to do our best; we’re out there for each other.

My favorite part of the year was to go to the San Antonio trip because it’s a really good experience, and I got to be away from home, which was kind of sad, but I really liked it. I got to be part of a whole different competition outside of Austin. It was really nice to go to other schools and see how there competition is; it was really good to see how well I had done compared to other competitions. My work was pretty good.

Kelly:
Going to San Antonio is always fun – taking the kids out of town, particularly some of the kids who don’t get out of town, we had a few kids, I’m not going to name names, who – it was their first time to go downtown to a big city like that. It’s great to give kids those opportunities they might not get otherwise. I also really enjoyed seeing how much Itzel improved this year, I really thought she had a great year; Ethan is the other player that really improved and, kind of, stepped up to that elite varsity level this year. You can say Cameron’s partner – Cameron made that jump last year into that, kind of that, top tier, and Royce has been there since he got there as a freshman. So those four players have been successful. Of course Emily, our freshman, came with a lot of skills (and has helped improve the team).

Next year we’re going to have a lot of seniors, particularly boys – we’re going to have a large group of senior boys, so we’re going to need to reload, so if anyone out there wants to play tennis you should come out – I need ‘ya. Of course we have some underclassman girls this year, like Itzel, Emily, and Sierra, if I’m forgetting anyone please put them in there, I’m sure they’ll be angry, who I think have a really bright future and will keep the strength of the team, after, kind of, my senior boys graduate.

(How long does it take to re-establish a team?) Well, the big factor is who you have coming in, in the past Coach Styles, and now Coach McGowan, and I have been able to go around and talk to kids and get them interested in coming our and playing. If you get a group of kids to come out a few of them are really going to get exited about it, like Cameron’s partner, and put time and effort in and become good players. I think you need at lease a year, because typically it takes about a year for even the better kids to get acclimated to tournaments and stuff like that; I know we’ve got some kids coming from eighth grade who’ll be joining our class next year – kids that people have said good things about, next year will be a learning process for them. If I don’t get some boys out next year, the year after that we’re going to be leaning pretty heavily on the girls.
San Miguel:
Well as a class, Family and Community services, and one of the things we do in that class is to plan a community service event that could make a big impact, and so we were trying to thing of things that would have a big impact here at Akins and we knew there was a lot of teen mothers and teen pregnancies here. So, in that, we were trying to think of what they need – what would give them support – so they decided to come up with this drive that would help give supplies to the pregnant and parenting students here. … They divided it by what was important for that age group, and then we actually took bags to the office …




Mrs. Bagnall:
It’s been a great experience with the Student Support Services; it’s nice to know that the clothes from my daughter can go on and help somebody else, who maybe doesn’t have the opportunity to go buy supplies, or doesn’t have the variety of supplies to buy, so it’s nice to know that what I’m doing is going to help somebody else take care of their responsibilities.



SSS: The Student Support Services is a program run by me, it’s here at Akins, and I have eight social work interns and that are all at the University of Texas’ School of social work getting their masters degree in social work. I’m a licensed clinical social worker; I have my masters degree and that license to do what I do here, and the services we provide are meeting people individually, helping people (in the field?) … in different stages of their life *and helping them, whether it be work problems, relationship problems, romantic problems
We provide a lot of different support groups: We have a pregnancy and parenting group, we provide an anger management group, emotions management group, which helps people cope with terms of depression and anxiety, we do a girl empowerment group, we have a healthy relationships group, which we do with guys only and girls only sections, we’re starting an LGTB group, and we have a mock group, so we open up our services to anyone in Akins who is a student here, and they’re all free, and they’re all voluntary, and we keep everything confidential in the group sessions including private and confidential
In some cases we do have to report (students), like in cases where we think someone might hurt themselves or be in trouble, other than that it’s all confidential. We also do special things, like we did a prom dress drive – and gave girls free prom dresses who were going to prom (because that’s a source of social tension), we also do certain things, like we arranged the field trip for parents who … dell children’s hospital … pregnant … Recently we had a baby, clothing, and toy drive…
Supply drive, and we had donations from teachers, we had donations from … we also acquired things from outside places, and we’re able to provide diapers, formula, books, toys, baby clothing … arranging sizes from infant up to preteen … we also have maternity clothes contributed for people who are still pregnant … we’re trying to help students cut down on …
So basically if we get a donation we try and match it – and that was … we can help them get connected through various sources through the school years … yeah, that’s some of the things we do, and what we’re about –
This is the first time we’ve done it … we have more kids dealing with pregnancy this year than we’ve had previously, we had teachers ask if they could do anything – they had children who had outgrown, or moved up sizes; they wanted a place where they could donate it that would go towards a good cause, and that’s actually kind of what started it, I had this thought, “sure!” So over the course of the school year we’ve received donations … and then recently we’ve stockpiled everything in one room and called down everyone who we thought could use it, and let them pick whatever they needed or wanted.
I can say there are probably two other people who help me organize it - … there’s been a couple who … so probably four of them have helped, not all of them help with every baby thing, some of them might take on other projects, we recently had … it’s sexual harassment awareness month, and the color of that month is teal, so recently one of my interns make bracelets and handed them out at lunch to help support rape victims and raise awareness.
… And then you have to talk to people about to the cause, I mean, she was the only one who did that; we do a lot of different projects. It’s sometimes more the interns on their own who organize these things: we did day of silence last year, and last Friday, and, I think it was three other interns who acted that out … they’ve (the students) been grateful, and they’ve been really nice, and told me “Thank you so much for getting this together!” There were times like that when I really felt like I was making a difference.
And there are some exceptions – we had a … and a stroller and a playpen, so some of them are bigger items; so a … is 20 bucks, but I mean, it’s 20 bucks, and a stroller and playpen can be expensive – so some of those cost … And some of our pregnant/parenting students do have jobs, and so they have to go to school, go to their job, and take care of themselves and possibly their child – it’s difficult for them to stay on track and graduate, so we try to help with that.
So far it’s been all personal donations, and teachers, and project in San Miguel’s class …so what we’ve been able to raise, and in the future we might even expand it to drives. People/donators in the community know basically by word of mouth … teachers can let neighbors and friends with a child “hey! We have this program at Akins you might want to donate to”
We probably, and I don’t know an exact number, help out about 50 students with Pregnancy and Parenting, and with all the other programs included we probably help out between 500 and 700 students.
And some people might be in more than one group, so numbers in terms of services provided to students can be higher than the actual count of students involved.
Mrs. Bagnal donated
We have a wide range of services; we’re welcoming, and are open to trying to help with anything a student needs help with.
I was hired in, if you’re a junior, the first semester of your freshman year … So it was 2009. There was a social worker here before me who actually started the program, also … and Ms. Wilson are strong advocates of the program, and when Mr. Girard came on he was, kind-of visionary enough to see the value in it.
Every year we do different programs – this is the first time we’ve done the baby give away. So every year we look at what we can do, and what the students need.