My Cup Runneth Over

Friends, life is good today. Well it's good all the time but today just feels extra great.

So, I was at Spencer today and actually had a really awesome day. Definitely the best one yet.

First, we had our split 6th grade class. most of the kids are pretty good, but I've been pairing up with Antoine the last few times since he needs a little more attention. Today we were finishing up poems made up words clipped out of magazines. Little Antoine has a very short attention span and got distracted several times throughout class, but he did make a nice little poem called "America Speaks". So that may have been a magazine headline, but it's still cool. He made an interesting little poem about our nation and wealth. I'm frustrated that I can't remember more of it now, but I was really proud of him. He could have made much more progress, but we're all about baby steps.

The next class was a full-size class of crazy little adorable first graders. As the kiddos started walking into class, several of them came up to me and hugged me. Ah, so precious. And one girl even said "You look pretty, Miss Clarissa!" Either she's learned to suck up from an early age or she's just precious. I'm thinking the latter. Anyway, poor little Montrell was having a rough time (crying under the table). So I asked what was wrong and he was just so upset that he couldn't draw a star. I coaxed him out from his hiding place and taught him how to draw a 5 pointed star just like my mommy taught me (thanks Mom!). He was soooo excited. Then little Montavius next to him wanted to be cool too (draw a star) so I taught him too. He was really good at it and just smiled so big when he got it. And he gave me two high-fives. It was so adorable, melted my heart.

The third grade class was a little rough, but ok. Nothing real notable to say about them today. Then the 4th graders came in to paper meche their masks. I guess last week I must have miraculously made an impression on this kid Demeon (dee-me-on) because he came in all grouchy and then got really excited when he saw me. WHAT. It was pretty cool. And he even made me something special (my first little handmade token from a student).  I have no idea what he was trying to do, he probably just glued some scraps together and called it awesome. But hey, it made me happy!

Lastly, I came home to the most wonderful care package from my parentals (warm clothes, yay!) and the lovely Linda Heidebrecht. It's just so great to have ya'll as cheerleaders. Even when I felt like a good day at Spencer was never going to happen, you still reassured me that I am making a difference. It's still hard to believe sometimes, but today was such great evidence that these kids actually do give a rip.

Thanks for all your love, support and prayers! May you all have little glimmers of hope today as I did!

Fall Fun

I’d say it’s high time for another fun post. If you’re friends with me on Facebook, you may have already seen some of these things but I’m going to tell more here!

So Last Friday (1 ½ weeks ago) our morning service appointment for community day cancelled at the last minute so we had nothing to do until outreach at the school that afternoon. So we went to the apple orchard! So many kinds of apples! So much fun.

    

Later that day, we did outreach at Melody like we do every week. At the end of the day, I walked back to meet the others. I walked by some firemen and started talking with them. They were super cool and nice and awesome. They offered for us to come by the station any time we wanted. Then they offered to give us a ride home. Hmm, we’ll have to think about that. Um, YES. Here’s photographic evidence of Billy climbing in and me being ridiculously, embarrassingly excited. 

That night, Billy and I ventured up to Lincoln Square to see Ms. D’s art pieces in a show and to also see cousin Hannah (Ms. D is the art teacher I assist at Spencer). Here’s some photos from that fun night.

Hannah said she would help me carve this and then I ended up doing nearly all of it. And I didn't feel like giving him another ear so here it is.

   

Now came the weekend of the Chicago Marathon. Many of you know Jackie Bohnenblust, who has been a long time friend and member of my home church in McPherson. She was also my teacher for 3 years! Jackie came into town with her daughter, Kristin, who was running in the marathon. After getting slightly lost getting off the train, I found her and we went on a boat tour highlighting Chicago’s architecture. It was super awesome.  

   

   

On my way back to the train, I stopped to take some pictures of the Flamingo Sculpture. I walk by it all the time but this time I got to really experience it.

  

Saturday night we had roomie bonding. We made pancakes for dinner and played 3 games. Megan won all 3 of them :(

Then came Sunday, marathon day! Megan and I went down to the UIC area to get a taste of the event and hopefully see either Hannah or Kristin.

   

I think there was something like 45,000 people that ran in the marathon. I had no idea 45,000 people in the world even wanted to run in a marathon. Let alone just the 2013 Chicago Marathon. As you can kind of tell in the pictures, it’s pretty intense and crowded. I was scanning faces like nobody’s business hoping to find Hannah or Kristin. Kristin had already passed, but I was determined to spot Hannah. I was scanning away, and at last, I spotted her! The adrenaline hit me and I probably looked like an idiot running after her yelling “Hannah! Hannah!”. I was super excited. Here she is at the 17 mile mark- doesn’t she look amazing for having run that far already?! So proud of her!

That’s all for now, amigos! Take care!

Humble struggles

Hello again!

Many, many things have been happening up here in Chicagoland. Ups and downs abound. Let me tell you about the end of last week.

Build- Thursday was interesting. We usually have split classes on Thursday afternoons, so half the class is in music and half is in art with us. This week, however, the music teacher was gone so we had all of the kids. Most of the day was fine, bad kids of course, but bearable. Then it was 2:00 and our 4^th graders came in. All 30+ of them. Now I hadn’t met half these kids yet since they’re usually in music. There was one kid in particular who was a real peach. He would blatantly ignore me every time I said something to him. He walked around the room while Ms. D was trying to instruct. And he made the other kids want to act up, too. Great combination.

Let’s just say this was the most horrible class we’ve had so far. These 9 year olds were acting like teenagers- defying authority, being disrespectful, showing off for each other, talking back. Ugh. I got to the point where I felt like I had lost it. I was yelling, which I rarely do. I was so angry. I have always felt that empathy and gentleness were some of my spiritual gifts, but on Thursday I was in short supply. I just got so caught up in the frustrations of the moment and didn’t take a step back to collect myself and take a different approach with them. Yes, these kids need to get yelled at sometimes. That’s the only way they will listen. You should have seen them when their really scary para came in to our class after they were being rowdy. Whoa, baby you can tell they were scared of her. She came in and RIPPED them a new one. Whew, was I glad I was not one of those kids. Anyway, the point is, they listened to her. They RESPECTED her authority. 

I want these kids to respect me, but don’t know how to gain their respect. I try to be nice and joke with them when I can, but as you can gather, that isn’t really possible all the time. Like I said, my strengths are tied with relationships. I’m good with one-on-one stuff, and I’m an optimistic person. I’m not really a dominating, intimidating personality. Trying to figure out how to connect with a large group of rowdy kids with my personality has been a challenge. 

Yesterday, I was waiting for the bus on Madison (a kinda busy street by the school) and I guy pulled up in a car behind me. He was a middle aged white man. He rolled down the window and said “Excuse me young lady, but what are you doing in this neighborhood?” that was after two “Hey white girl!” comments at me since leaving the school. I told him that I worked at Spencer. He asked if I was ok, I said yes. He asked if I was usually ok, if I’d had any trouble. I said no, I sometimes get comments from passersby but nothing threatening or uncomfortable. In a strange way it was just nice to know that even random strangers respect what I’m doing and care about my safety.

Then tonight I went to the Garfield Park building to sign up for a fitness center membership. I went a few days ago to look at the facility, and then thought about it for a few days (since it costs 1 ½ monthly stipends for me). So yeah, I went in and was waiting for someone to help me (one guy was tied up aiding a kid who fell down the stairs) and a girl came out and helped me, just as she was getting ready to leave for the day. It was the same girl who gave me the tour the other day. I told her I wanted the $150 year-long membership (they also have one-time, one-month, and three-month options but the annual is the best value). Monique (the employee) told me she was going to do something special for me and give me the three month $55 rate except for a year pass! Can you say awesome? She said that I was quite possible the ONLY person to get a yearlong membership. A lot of people do the $10 several week conditioning program or pay the $17/month since they can’t afford $155 up front for the whole year. Wow. I mean, I don’t consider myself to be a very wealthy person. I have a savings account, even though not a lot is in it. But I never had to worry about having enough funds to cover $155. Very humbling.

Monique asked me some demographic questions that were optional but I didn’t mind answering. Age: 22. Race: White, Non-Hispanic. Household Status: Single, no kids. Highest degree of education earned in household: Bachelor’s degree. Income level: Under $25,000. I’m like the black sheep of the neighborhood. I’m guessing that most people in the neighborhood would only match my information on one of those categories…Can you guess which one? Yeah. Income level. So maybe I threw off their demographics a little bit, but I’m proud to represent myself :)

Well friends, I don’t want to overload you all at once so I’ll save the rest for another post. Stay tuned, it’s gonna be AWESOME.

Encouraged and Challenged

This week was better. Things at Grace Seeds are still going well. We’re planning for an event coming up in a few weeks which is fun, and also looking ahead to the upcoming months. I’m excited to put together a family cookbook for Grace Seeds and all of their partners. We’re collecting recipes and food memories from people and tying them all together in a fun cookbook. Anyway, if any of ya’ll have some awesome family recipes or stories and want to be featured in a Chicagoland cookbook, send ‘em my way! :)

Spencer- The kids are still bad. It’s still tough. But it’s ok. Last week a boy was getting picked on and tore up his artwork L. It broke my heart. Kids are so mean! Last Thursday was the best day I’ve had there. Don’t get me wrong, it was still stressful and tiring, but it wasn’t all bad. For starters, I got like 10 hugs! I love when the little kiddos say “Miss Clarissa!” smile and hug me. Ah, yay for affirmation.

Short story- This kid named Michael (about 9 or 10 years old) came in really grumpy about something. He was assigned at the green table and sat there or in time out for about half the class period, and was really sensitive to other kids looking at him or speaking to him. He would frequently outburst “Quit messin with me!” and stuff like that. Kicked his chair. Kicked the cabinets. He was just angry. Then Ms. D moved him to the purple table where the kids were better behaved. It was amazing to see how his demeanor changed when his immediate surroundings changed. He was quietly working on his art, he was CALM, and he asked me for help. I was able to help him with cutting shapes, and he was so proud of his work! And---he gave me a hug and a cute little smile at the end of class! Yay! It was ridiculously exciting for me to see that.

 Anyway, I think that’s kind of how all of us are sometimes. People can trigger us without meaning to. We become short with those whom we care about. There are so many things going on within us that we don’t even notice something’s wrong until we do something that we regret. Sometimes we just need to take a deep breath and remove ourselves from the situation, even if it’s where we are “supposed” to be. It’s amazing how the people and experiences around us define us. (human development—yeahhh!) See, there’s something that we can learn from everyone! Even angry 9-year-olds.

This weekend, my housemates, site coordinator and I went away to a KOA in Union, Illinois to tell our life stories. Intense, right? I love hearing testimonies, nature, fire, games and fellowship so it was a great time! I’d never been to a KOA before and it was rather interesting. It’s like camping for city people. You’re in town but you’re not. You can hear cars whizzing by on the interstate. So, it was not quite the full immersion in nature that I am used to with camping, but it was still good. Yay for bonding.

Monday proved to be a busy day for me, working with Grace Seeds from 9-3 and then with Build until almost 8. This was our first week of Becoming Women, a group at Build for high school girls who learn about teen dating violence. This group of girls will actually then present this material to community groups. Last year they presented to the police force! So on Monday we had 4 girls come and a few staff members joined for a peace circle. Connie (Build staff in charge of Becoming Women) laid out a bunch of feathers and ribbons in the middle of the circle. We were all instructed to pick up something that “spoke” to us and then tell the group about it. We were able to get pretty deep pretty quickly as many women in the circle chose pink ribbons to signify loved ones who have battled breast cancer. 

The program ended around 6 but Connie had to work until 7 and then she had to give one of the girls, we’ll call her Sam, a ride home. I hung out with Sam while she waited for Connie. Over the course of our 90 minute conversation (Connie was late), Sam told me some alarming stuff. She wants to have a baby next September (She’s telling this to a 22-year-old who is terrified at the thought of being responsible for a life-controlling, screaming, pooping infant). Neither Sam (17) nor her boyfriend (16) have jobs and both are in high school. I asked Sam why not wait until she at least gets her diploma, but she said “I can’t have a baby while I’m in college!”. All I could think was “and you really think you’re going to college when you have an baby?”. She is so idealistic about it, and I found it difficult to reason with her. Yay for adolescent cognition (human development is great stuff I tell you). So, unfortunately, after one conversation, I was not able to convince her that babies are a bad idea right now (since we’re being idealistic). However, I’m hoping that through relationships with me, Build staff, and peers she can put that dream on the back burner for a few years. 

Anyway, I also learned that Sam lost a 19-year-old cousin a couple years ago. She didn’t go into specifics, but I know that he was shot. Violence becomes a lot more personal when you make a personal connection. Unfortunately, Sam’s cousin’s death is not uncommon around these parts. A few weeks ago, one of the kids in church had just lost a friend to a shooting. 

As we talked about kids dying at young ages, Sam asked me if one victim was in heaven or hell. You know; just casual small talk. Not. I was terrified. This was heavy stuff, and I felt so unqualified to talk with her about any of these huge spiritual issues. We talked back and forth for a seemingly endless amount of time covering topics like original sin, heaven, hell, the devil, and forgiveness. That, coupled with the fact that I’d already had a sort of long day, and the fact that she was really hard to understand, made it a rather draining conversation for me. I feel like it should have had the opposite effect, but it is what it is. Another reason why I felt like a bit of a failure that night. I asked Sam if she felt better after our conversation, and she did say yes, but I felt like that was kind of a pity answer. Oh well. I invited her to church but we’ll see if that works out. Anyway, I’ll keep you all posted on that, but prayers are certainly coveted.

Hopefully my next post will be more uplifiting, but I wanted to share a couple of experiences with you all. Take care!

Clarissa