Jeanne's+thoughts+on+2011+retreat

I was stunned and delighted that we finally created a "safe space" -- after nearly 10 years of this project, we've talked for hours and hours and hours about how to enable kids to really connect, to see "the other" in their own hearts and in each other, and allow for true acceptance. Safe space is so common a buzzword in our work with kids that it's become almost cliche, and at Parker we've done so much work to truly underscore our community with the ability to go beyond "tolerance" (as though difference is something we merely tolerate) to celebrate -- that's what the "campfire event" at the Junior /trip was to me -- a celebration. And while we may have orchestrated it, tinkered for years with getting the program just right to enable kids to "tear down their walls", something overwhelmed us this year, like a force of nature, with the outpouring of emotion and acceptance when four kids came out as gay, one kid came out as poor, a dozen kids came out as lonely, more kids came out as loving each other. Vulnerability embraced Confidence and met up with Joy.

I just noticed that Mike is drinking Mountain Dew during Lent -- uh oh!

I couldn't help but experience the night as a mother, thinking about my own almost 12-year-old boy, growing up in this community -- it is among my deepest desires that he experience the kind of unconditional group love and support that the Class of 2012 created for each other. Is it sad to me that you have to wait till March of 11th grade? I guess it's better than waiting till late May of 12th grade, as it was up until last year. And who am I to say that profound acts of kindness and friendship don't occur all along the way. Yet feedback from the students indicates that this was a whole new level of connection that hadn't occurred before. Maybe the coming out stories emphasized this quality of being something beyond.

There's no question in my mind that our Community Connections curriculum created the foundation for this event. - we begin the year with the study of "the other" and the process of marginalization -- as much as we all feel the pain of starting the year with //The Scarlet Letter//, it just works, because it so vividly defines the archetype, and our marriage of that concept to the work of our groups is visceral. We can all see through the lens of homelessness, LGBT, drug abuse, and so on how stigma and labeling not only have deep roots in our culture, but continue to be dominant patterns well beyond the Puritan (or /transcendental) period. Our work taking kids out to see it in the city, to meet the people who experience marginalization, and to meet the activists who confront it, gives them real-life models of how damaging and limiting this very American pattern is in the supposed Land of the Free and Home of Plenty. As we work up to the Jr retreat, they have several experiences under their belt, and they feel trusted with confronting complexity, treated like adults, looking at real problems, not academic excercises.

And the programming of the retreat itself is genius. We start with sharing through the Film Fest, and each group does such a terrific job of getting us to see that it's all around us, called by so many names. The day of action -- speaking for SSDP here -- is such a bonding experience, identifying a problem, articulating their understanding by making signs, and hitting the streets to interact with citizens. The pair dialogues bring the connection to a face-to-face level, not a stranger, and yet not a dear friend. Improv games loosen everyone up, fill the room with laughter, lowering down the defenses and opening up to other kids'...