I’m spending part of this week working on preparing for a class I’ll be teaching in January on ministering to troubled youth.
Part of the background reading for the class is The Youth Worker’s Guide to Helping Teenagers in Crisis. I read through it and took some notes that should help me in class.
Here are some of my notes on the book, if you want to read them.
Some of the more interesting things from the book are:
- Crisis is a self-defined experience. Something that is a crisis for me may not be considered a crisis for you.
- Facts are the raw material for solving a problem. Get them from as many perspectives as possible.
- On any given day, “Who we are” as helpers in a crisis might be more important than “what we know.”
- If we’re going to be helpful, especially to young people, we have to be adept at making person-to-person relationships.
- Empathy is feeling your pain in my heart.
- Few young people ever have the experience of being really listened to by an adult – someone who takes the time, energy, and focus required to fully understand.
- Ordinary people felt safe around Jesus. He treated them like people not projects.
There are a ton more important things in the book. It’s a good read, and is really useful in youth ministry. I would highly recommend it. If it were in Spanish, it might be the a textbook for my class on Ministry to Troubled Youth.
Yesterday was my last 7 am class of the quarter (see related post). I asked my students when they finished classes for the day, and they said that they finished at 1 pm every Tuesday and Thursday. I was astonished! The whole quarter, we’ve been killing ourselves to have class at 7 am, and we could have been having class at 1 or later in the afternoon! Wow! What a letdown. Anyway, next quarter, we’ll be sure to discuss that issue further before we wake up so stinking early everyday.
Many of my students are being or have been invited to share at other churches. When people find out that they are studying youth ministry, they ask them to speak to the young people at their church either at a camp or a conference or youth meeting. Many times, my students have never shared at anything like this, and they come to me for help. So, here is some of the advice I give them when invited to speak:
- Find out as much about your audience that you can. What are the demographics of the group? How long have they been involved in the church? Are they Christians? Are they new Christians? Are their parents Christians? What are their ages? What experiences do you share with the group? How committed are they to Christ and the church? How big will the group be? What is their life situation?
- Find out what topic they want you to speak about. Will your topic be the main theme of the meeting/retreat/camp? What else will they be studying? How does your topic fit into the overall theme of the activity? Why do they want you to speak about this topic? What’s their reason behind this topic? What is the purpose of the activity? What do they want to accomplish with your part of the activity? Do they have an idea for follow up of the topic?
- Find out as much about the event that you can. Where is it? How much time do you have? Are you the only speaker? Will there be multiple talks? Will there be audio and video available? Will you have time to spend with the audience before your part? How much? Doing what?
- What are they accustomed to, and how much liberty do you have to change that. Do they want you to be more dynamic than what they are used to? Do they want you to use the style they are used to? Will they allow for you to be different? How different can you be? How have they responded in the past?
- The information always comes before the presentation style. (What you are going to say should be determined before you decide how you will say it.) Once you know the answers to as many of the questions as possible, you can begin to work on your part of the activity. The topic and lesson points always come before the learning activities. You must know where you want to go with the talk before you can decide what road to take to get there (drama, video, question/answer, small groups, etc). Too often, my students just tell me they want it to be dynamic, but they don’t have any idea what they want to get across to their audience. You must know this first. It seems like a no-brainer to most of us, but it’s not to those who are new to all this.
Anyway, I wanted to put down some of my thoughts so that I could better help my students in the future.
You wouldn’t be able to think about how often people tell me, “So, you only have to work two days a week.” They say this because I have class only two days a week (4 hours per day). They think that a seminary prof only has to work the days that he is teaching. Well, they’re wrong.
I do a lot of other things during the week besides time spent in class. Here are some of those things:
Background reading. Guess what…I read most of what I ask my students to read…and then some. I’m always reading background stuff for my classes. I’m always reading stuff that could be textbooks for future classes. I have to. If I don’t, I’m not up on what’s going on in my discipline.
Grading papers. All those papers, quizzes, and tests that a professor assigns to his students have to get graded. In my case, they get graded by me.
Preparing tests and quizzes. These things don’t self prepare. Someone has to actually make them. That would be me.
Research for upcoming classes. Most of the curriculum for the classes that I will be teaching is in English. I teach in Spanish. My notes are in Spanish. Someone has to translate and adapt this stuff to the culture. That’s my job.
Chapel. We have chapel for an hour every week. Professors attend chapel…most of the time.
(more…)
Today, I gave the first mid-term exam I will give this quarter. It was in Principles of Youth Ministry, and the students did really well. The average grade was 92%. Not too shabby. These first year students are pretty good students. Of course, this course is one of the easier ones we teach. I think my tests are good indicators of their progress, but they also have a big final project (a paper). Hopefully, they won’t procrastinate on it.
My other class has an exam scheduled for Tuesday. It’s harder to evaluate that class because the content is more concept driven for the purpose of understanding. It’s not a facts and figures, principles kind of class. It’s more a conceptual, difficult to understand class. Plus, there’s always the fact that this weekend is a holiday, and there are many activities planned at the churches where the students work. Anyway, I’ll let you know how their exam goes next Tuesday.
I have class at 7 am every Tuesday and Thursday. It’s really bad to have class that early. There are a TON of reasons why I hate having class at that hour. Here are seven of them.
- The students haven’t eaten yet. It’s hard to get out of bed without anything to eat and still be awake for class. One of the first things you want to do when you wake up is eat, but the students at the seminary don’t have that privilege. They have to wait until 9 am for breakfast. An empty stomach is bad for learning.
- It’s still dark outside. When I walk to class, it’s dark outside. When we are in class, it’s still dark. When we leave class, it’s a little lighter. This isn’t good for the awake-ness of anyone. Who wants to go somewhere when it’s dark outside?
- Nobody else is at the seminary. The seminary feels like a ghost town at 7 am. There is very little action, making it quiet and not conducive for learning.
- They just got out of bed, and I’m supposed to keep them awake. I know I’m an interesting teacher, but have you ever tried to get a discussion going at the crack of dawn (or before)?
- Nobody wants to be there. When the students would rather be sleeping, it’s bad. When the teacher would rather be sleeping, it’s a bad thing, too. At seven in the morning, both of those statements are true.
- Getting up so early causes problems at night. On Mondays and Wednesdays, I have to go to bed early so I can get up on Tuesdays and Thursdays. On Tuesdays and Thursdays, I barely can stay awake from having gotten up so early. It’s a no win situation.
- I have to creep around the house in the morning. In order to not wake up the baby or Janell, I have to tip-toe around the house in the dark morning. It’s not easy to do that without waking someone up.
There are also some benefits to early class. I’ll let you know if I think of some.
