August 24th, 2011

ACES Team Leader Spotlight: Jessica Thompson

Fourth Grade ACES Class with Jessica

Team Leaders are a critical piece of ACES academic after-school tutor/mentor programs. They are part-time, paid direct service staff who are in charge of an ACES classrooms and deliver ACES curriculum each day.

Given Jessica Thompson’s multiple advocacy commitments, some people may wonder where she found the time to serve at not one, but both, Saint Paul ACES school sites during the 2010-11 school year. As a fourth-grade ACES Team Leader, Jessica led ACES classrooms during after-school, completed in-class tutoring hours during the regular school day, and volunteered for ACES special events such as Mark Rosen's All-Star Afternoon, benefiting ACES.

Jessica still finds a way to put her own education first, though. She is a University of Minnesota youth studies major. Jessica chose the youth studies major because she loves working with people, especially youth, and she strives to help them to succeed. Her philosophy of youth work revolves around meeting youth where they are at and getting to know them as people..

Moreover, Jessica’s patience, consistency, and positive reinforcement methods encourage the youth she works with to grow as individuals. Her favorite ACES moment, for example, came in a game called “I Would Rather", where students choose to stand on one side of the room or the other. Seeing that two students changed their answers when they saw that they were in the minority, Jessica used the opportunity to have a productive, youth-led class discussion about being an individual. In this way, Jessica strives to encourage young people to express their voices and believes that youth, “Have a voice, a story, and a lot of knowledge to bring to the world.” .