Things he wish he knew

Joel shared information today that he has learned over his ministry years that he did not know going into them.

One thing that stuck out to me was when he said "spend time outside of the inner city". It is important to take time and spend it outside of the area in which you live, work, eat, sleep, and breathe. That is one thing that I do not do enough of now as a student. I've been told that next year when I'm an RA I will need to spend a few days per month off campus, just regrouping. I liked that little piece of information.

A scary thought was when he said that "compromise" and "experiment" are not dirty words. So often I am scared of failing so much that I do not experiment with anything. I realize that this can be a bad thing, but experimenting is not so fun to me either. I will just have to make sure that I am working with someone who is not afraid to experiment and compromise or who will urge me to get out of my zone.

Basically all of the information was extremely useful and now I get to start life with that knowledge instead of having to learn it all :).

Behavior 101

Today we talked about behavior management, an area in which I could use a lot of work. Joel talked about how important respect is. Respect is different with inner city kids though. Because there is a lot of distrust, many times they will not respect you until you respect them. I think that many times leaders like to think that they deserve respect because they are the leader. Or because they are the adult/college volunteer. But that is not how it works with these students. You have to show them the respect first.

There were a few other guidelines as well such as following through on threats, making sure that the punishment fits the crime, and a few other things as well.

There was a really creative form of discipline that I really liked. It was based on a sports camp and the consequence is something physical, like push-ups or laps. Here's the catch: the leader does it as well. This shows support and love even in a time of punishment. I like the idea of physical punishments like this because it is a way to release energy for the student and is beneficial for their health in the long run.