Creating+Alliances+10-20-11

We started the day with breakfast and a quick bus trip to the Broadway Youth Center. We met in a circle with Lara Brooks the center director. She was so friendly and welcoming. It was clear that she had an agenda for her workshop. We started with going around the circle and our goal was to say our name, our preferred pronoun and then we were to make an alliteration or some corny name out of our zodiac sign. I was a combination of He and Aries so I was Haries. She then passed out 9 definitions and nine terms. The goal was for the people with terms to find their matching definition. This was great and then led to a discussion. We later were told about different scenarios and perceptions of homelessness. Our goal was then to go in the corner where we agree most: Strongly Agree, Agree, Strongly Disagree, and Disagree. At the end, the kids were still engaged and we finished within an hour. On the bus ride back, the kids were talking a little about what we had done. Back at school, they said that this was the best visit so far, they learned the most. We watched Daddy and Papa (the Laramie Project wasn't working) and we dicussed gay families and they seemed to have loved the documentary.