Extracurricular Mentoring

Classes at the institute finish at 10 pm and the students begin making their way home. Some travelling as far as 5 hours each way and the majority at least an hour commute. Those of us that live in the same section of the city, walk the 7 blocks to the subway station and take the subway northeast. It's 30 to 50 minutes more of time together and we take advantage of it as part of our role as mentors.

In the photo above Annette waits with David Killy, one of the first graduates from the Youth Leadership Institute. This pic is taken at around 11:00 pm at the train station where, after the subway ride, we wait with him for his train to arrive (and as you can see below, it arrived).

Though our workday is a bit out of whack, we thoroughly appreciate the opportunity to invest of lives in these 20-something and 30-something youth leaders from all over the city and continent.

Out of the Box

For months most of our pictures have been of students at the EJ Institute, an accurate reflection of our life, but in the last few weeks we’ve gotten out a bit more. Here are some highlights:

IEJ Challenge

If you can imagine The Amazing Race infused with spiritual disciplines you’ll have an idea of the event we lead for 34 of the students. It was as much a challenge for us as it was for them but we’re all agreed it accomplished more in 48 hours than all of the mentoring we’ve done over the past months combined.

Generacion Lideres

Most of our students work on a team with other people, who are passionate about working with teenagers but who don’t have formal training. This day long training event was the perfect venue for our students to learn alongside their leadership team, resulting in shared vision and better communication.

Half-Marathon

I have enjoyed wonderful runs this autumn and capped off the season running 13.4 miles at the annual fall half-marathon. If that seems longer than a normal “half” …it was. According to my GPS I ran three tenths of a mile more than I needed to, which is a good reminder that sometimes it’s OK to “cut corners” instead of “going the extra mile.”

Raices in Rosario province of Santa Fe, Argentina

In the past ten years Raices (Roots) has grown from an annual congress into an organic movement with impact throughout the Spanish speaking world. We haven’t accepted invitations related to it since the opening of the EJ Institute, but we couldn’t resist a weekend retreat about four hours from Buenos Aires in which our seven hours of teaching was complemented by the participation of three students and one of the mentors from the EJ Institute.

Guatemala

If someone had offered us a week of vacation in this amazing country we never would have accepted it at this point, but God knew we needed a change of pace so he orchestrated an invitation to a think tank about Christian education in Latin America that we couldn’t resist. Down time with the EJ Institute director and his wife, a visit to the Guatemala campus, catching up with friends we hadn’t seen in over fifteen years, and a canopy tour were unexpected outcomes of the trip. What was no surprise was the great coffee. (We came home with nine pounds of it.)

Happy, Feliz Birthday, Annette!

She's my best friend and my overall favorite person in world. She's hard working and inspirational, she laughs and smiles easily and makes you feel accepted, but then challenges you with great questions and deep, quotable statements. She's beautiful and strong and soft and fit... all in one person.

Happy, happy birthday, Annette!

Not Exactly An Office Job

Break Time with a Learning Activity

For the first quarter since the EJ Institute for youth leaders started last August, Tim and I are not teaching classes. This frees us up to focus on our primary role at the school, that of “spiritual directors” or as we see it, being the youth leaders to the youth leaders studying with us. This means being present every evening for the classes, looking out for the students well-being (including making sure there is fresh, good coffee and clean mugs for the 20 minute break half way through the three hour class), fostering community building during the breaks, and spending time one-on-one with the students.

The fifty-five students are very diverse. They come from seven different Spanish-speaking countries and range in age from eighteen to fifty-two. Some of them walk a few blocks to class while others make a ten hour round trip. But they all have a long term commitment to working with teenagers and young adults.

Some of our best mentoring time is the walk home after class

This weekend we take the mentoring program into new territory with our first retreat. Thirty four students are entrusting us with their weekend with no idea what awaits them. For weeks they’ve been trying to get the details out of us, but they don’t have a clue. It’s gonna be fun and like nothing they’ve experienced before. We’ll post pictures soon.

Is It Worth It?

click pic to enlarge

The Monday after the earthquake in Chile Felipe, our Chilean student at the EJ Institute for youth ministry, kept falling asleep in class. When we had asked about his family back home he was unemotional and told us that he had spoken briefly with his grandmother and everyone was fine.

During the class break I went up to him as he prepared himself a cup of coffee, “Felipe, are you OK? It seems like you can’t stay awake?”

“I haven’t been able to sleep since the earthquake,” he replied. “I was finally able to talk with my family and now I know they’re fine, but I have a lot of college friends in other cities and I don’t know how they are.”

We know the crushing impotence of living many miles removed from people you love who are suffering. Logically you know that if you were there you couldn’t do anything to change things but it feels so wrong to go on blithely with life when they can’t.

In the following days Felipe was back to sleeping through the night and had more news from Chile. The following week I looked for a space to check in with him.

“When are you going back to Chile?” I asked.

“In December,” Felipe replied. “It takes three days to get to my house by bus and if I were to try to go during the mid-year break I would spend six days traveling for just a few days at home, so I’ll wait until I finish the program.”

Felipe came to us with high expectations. As he said in his application, “When I was a senior in High School I was voted president of the school’s Christian Student Union. As I worked with them I realized how abandoned teenagers are by the church in my area. There is a lot of work with children, adults and even the elderly but there was nothing for teenagers. I want to study at the EJ Institute so I can pay attention to the needs of this generation.

In the face of Felipe’s big vision you can see why I asked the following question a bit fearfully, “Felipe, it’s such a sacrifice for you to be here….is it worth it?”

He broke into a big smile which was echoed in his eyes as he said, “Oh yes.”

Whew :-)

What Made It So Great?

Last night might have been our favorite time so far with the youth leadership institute. What made it great? I think it was the combination of working with enthusiastic, experienced youth leaders plus a subject we're passionate about and seeing them "get" how it has significance and application for their work.

Yay!

Annette leading the Orientation for new apprentices

("apprentice" is the Institute's term for "student")

This is the third quarter of classes, and though the student body
has grown by around 40% each new quarter, there continues
be a great atmosphere of camaraderie and enthusiasm.

Within the last few month we received a significant donation from
someone within Argentina, this was nearly matched by two other
donors in the U.S.. This has allowed us to hire 3 desperately
needed staff and should float us until late this year when
we the institute should be econimically self-sufficient.
Thank you, God!

Here are a few of the old and new apprentices at the Argentina campus
of the "Instituto Especialidades Juveniles". They come from 6 foreign
countries - Argentina, Peru, Spain, Venezuela, Colombia, Chile,
Ecuador - as well as many provinces within Argentina

Click any of the pics to "biggie size" them.
For more info and images,
see our Facebook profile
or click here.

Let the Teacher Beware

Over Christmas vacation our brother-in-law Dan introduced me to the book Taking Learning to Task: Creative Strategies for Teaching Adults by Jane Vella. It starts out,

Socrates knew it. Jesus knew it. The Buddha knew it. Every open question asked as the peripatetic crowd in white togas strolled around Athens, every parable put to the crowds at the lakeside…was a learning task. These great teachers set great learning tasks because they knew the power of dialogue.

I was hooked. While Tim and our nephews played for hours outside I took copious notes on Vella.

For years we have seen ourselves as “facilitators” rather than “teachers” or “speakers” and we always try to include a variety of learning styles in our training, but on the first page Vella showed me that what we’ve used have been “teaching tasks” instead of “learning tasks.” As she says, “When I prepared teaching tasks, I was not inviting dialogue. I was structuring my monologue.”

So far I’ve taught four classes at the EJ structured around learning tasks and I’m thrilled by the difference I’ve seen in level of student’s engagement with the material. The following pictures give you an idea of the environment we create.

Now if you are involved in adult education and you’re thinking about getting this book, its only fair to warn you: a learning centered approach is full of challenges. For one thing, it’s difficult and time-consuming to prepare good learning tasks. It also develops people’s capacity to think for themselves. This might not sound like a challenge, however some of our students come from authoritarian environments where personal opinion is not valued. As Vella says,

This learning-centered approach has the delightful quality of uncovering domination and oppressive purposes. A dominating manager quickly discovers that you are the wrong educator to strengthen his control over the workers or staff.

As this third semester of the EJ Institute for youth workers nears the halfway point, many of the problems that plagued us last year are being alleviated by the new staff, but we're constantly reminded that this project requires more wisdom than what we have.

"Summer" "Vacation"

click photo to view larger

We’ve been in Argentina long enough to adapt to some of the cultural rhythms, including arriving at the end of the calendar year exhausted. The average porteño (person from Buenos Aires) burns the candle of life at both ends, prioritizing work, study and relationships over sleep. For example, it’s not unusual for students at the EJ Institute to leave their house before 8 A.M., get home after 11 P.M., and then eat dinner. Caffeine and internal drive go a long way to keep them going day after day, but their secret weapon against complete depletion is summer vacation. The city powers down around Christmas and feels almost deserted until March, when kids go back to school.

Come December, we decided to embrace the cultural rhythm by getting out of town too. Even though we were neither in summer, nor really on vacation, we have been recharged by the time spent with family, friends and churches who collaborate with us in the work we do providing resources and training for youth leaders in the Spanish-speaking world.

Absence Makes the Heart Grow Fonder... We Hope

Courses, clases, students, professors...

These are the students (all active youth leaders) for just one of twelve courses we've offered so far. Each course lasts ten weeks and requires them to plan and execute a course-related project within their youth ministry context.

Yes, it HAS been WAY too long since we posted something on this blog. Months, and months. The images above give you a clue as to what has kept us occupied - really, really occupied - since August 3rd.

No Crying or Detention

First day of classes at the Youth Specialties Institute (Buenos Aires campus)

We returned home after the first day of classes with no detention, no crying, and I even want to go back again today :-) (If you don't know what I'm talking about read our previous post)