Community panel

Today was a special event in the PA timeline - our community panel!

The community panel is a way for the PA students, who've worked all year on their project, to make it public - that is, to articulate their passion to those who it will impact. In our case, this was mostly others who worked at CCSEL with us and Narnian school administrators.

As usual, I was in doubt over whether it would come together - a few minutes before class started, we had only two students, nervous and confused, who hadn't worked on their project all week. One, *Tom*, was a student who had been with us along - the rock who we could depend on to be there every week. The other was vocal, but a bit of a loose cannon who missed class a lot. I ran through what I could with them, but there was so much - I knew I was overwhelming them.

When the bell rang, a TON (a Narnian ton is about 10 people) of students came pouring in - some we'd never even had in class! There were also administrators that we hadn't invited on the panel. Typical day in Narnia there.

The excitement was much different than I had experienced in my previous years coaching - where students had simply seemed frustrated, these students seemed much more excited, though much less invested. I tried to serve the role of reassuring the students (and realized how much more confident I was coaching this year in the process of doing so - I wasn't as nervous as they were, for once!).

Although Tom did most of the talking, we were able to get a word from a lot of students (although some were a bit TOO honest about their past and present drug use). The highlight for me was that MY one-to-one mentee, the quiet and most dedicated student who SWORE he wouldn't speak at the panel, contributed!

All around, despite the fantastical oddities (candid drug references, random students stealing our food, and my co-coaching consuming a face-full of wet lettuce), it was an utterly successful, if Narnian day!