Final Reflection

YTH-220
Ryan Wilson
Final Reflection Paper

For my practicum I volunteered at JC Bodyshop during their After-school Program (A.S.P.) and Block Party night on Thursdays. For A.S.P, I helped kids with their homework, co-led a small group and was in charge of many different kinds of activities (such as Madden or Guitar Hero Tournaments). Block Party had more of a community center type feel. Most of what I did for Block Party was playing basketball with the students and building relationships with them.
Both of these experiences produced a lot of frustration for me. A.S.P. was always in a state of constant anarchy, and with the exception of a few kids, no one displayed any respect for each other, much the less for the JC sponsors. Block Party was very unorganized. This created a lot of confusion for me in that I often found it hard to find anything important to do, besides building relationships.
I realize now that I probably should have been more proactive in finding other jobs to do and talking with Pastor Mike about my concerns, but unfortunately it is too late now. If I were to do this whole thing again, I would be more assertive and ask for different kinds of jobs.
Another very frustrating aspect of the practicum was the lack of face time with my supervisor. I did not realize at the beginning of the practicum that I needed ten supervised hours with my supervisor, and then once I noticed it, Pastor Mike was barely around anymore. I did get some one-on-one time with Pastor Brittan, probably accumulating about two hours with him, but I hardly got to talk to Pastor Mike at all, much the less spend supervised hours with him.
I feel like I learned a lot and grew both personally and professionally, although most of what I learned was what not to do. I made many mistakes in my first practicum, and I feel like I have learned some valuable lessons about dealing with people. Spiritually, I have been on a roller coaster ride all semester. It seemed like right when I was feeling the best spiritually, I would have a terrible day at practicum and vice-versa. Hopefully next semester I can maintain better spiritual balance.
Overall, this experience has been very helpful to me, but also very frustrating. I suppose you could contribute some of my frustrations as growing pains, but I also think that the organizational aspects of the JC Bodyshop internship program could be greatly improved.

Week 9 (6:30-8-30) Blockparty

This will be a short post, seeing that I will be making my final reflection in just a second here.

Well, today was pretty good. A.S.P. is over now for the semester, so I just did Block Party today. We just hung out and played basketball most of the time. It is kind of nice to have the freedom to just relate with students, but at the same time, I wish the Pastors would give us more to do. It feels so unorganized there sometimes.

I realized today that God has gifted me more toward small town ministries rather than Urban ministries. This is not to say that I cannot develop skill in Urban ministries, but naturally with my unique experiences, I am more fit currently for small town ministry.

This was a down week spiritually for me. Family issues. Bleck.

Week 8 (3:15-8:30) A.S.P & Block Party

This week was kind of a strange one. It was the "Christmas Party" for the after school program, and all we did was watch the movie Elf and give away prizes. Even though we made the activities much more kid friendly, they still couldn't behave or sit still. In fact, they were worse than they were last week. I don't understand it. Then to make everything worse, we rewarded them for their behavior and gave them prizes at the end. It was kind of ridiculous. How are supposed to expect these kids to learn to behave themselves and learn about discipline if we never do ANYTHING to discipline them? Simply taking their names out of the drawing would have been better than nothing. It just seems to like sometimes, they are completely out of control, and yet, I still have not been given any authority to come up with any real consequence. The worst I can do is, "Ok that's it. We're going to go talk to Pastor Mike." Scary.

Block Party was interesting too. The gym was taken up by a fish fry set-up so all the usual Block Party peeps were crammed into the main part of the building. During Block Party, I felt completely useless. No one asked me to do anything, no one I tried to talk to seemed to really respond... all I could really do was be a policeman and make sure kids weren't doing drugs or making out. I thought to myself as twirled my imaginary nightstick that there must be more to youth ministry than this. I was sick of just sitting around and I was feeling like this entire practicum, I have not really done substantial good for any kid there.

If I were to make suggestions about how to fix these things, I would probably say:
1. Give us more responsibility -- Honestly, it seems like our supervisors don't care at all if we're even there sometimes. We show up, say hi to them, and then they basically say, "Go play with the kids. Let us grown ups handle all the real work." I'm sorry, but that really frustrates me sometimes.
2. Make a real plan for discipline and start STICKING to it -- The kids can basically do whatever they want, and as long as they stop doing it for about 5 minutes at a time, no one does anything about it. For me, it would be a lot easier to follow through on discipline if I knew what their policy was about it... (or if they had one)
3. Quit treating the kids like lil' homies and start treating them like adolescents -- This one is on me. I have a habit of trying too hard to make the kids like me. Honestly, it shouldn't be my responsibility to be their best friend, it's my responsibility to be a shephard for them. Sometimes a shephard is really nice to his sheep, but are times when he has to pull the sheep with his staff. Cheesey analogy, and I probably screwed it up, but you get the idea.
4. Have them try to come up answers themselves, rather than spoon-feeding them canned Christianese answers -- I think the kids we are dealing with are old enough to take part in discussions in a small group type setting.

Anyway, I know I have been very critical today, but these are just a few of the things that I have picked up about how not to do things. Don't get me wrong, Pastors Mike and Brittan are awesome, but those are just some of their weaknesses.

Spiritually speaking, it was a roller coaster ride. One night, I was absolutely depressed, the next day I felt way better because that night I had resurrendered my future to God, but then the next day I was low again because of familiy issues. So the week was quite different and difficult for me.

One more post, then this blog is done.