First time I thought of it that way...

http://www.cranstonherald.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=7338&Itemid=32

Oh man. When I have a baby, she's totally getting a shirt saying that she's part of the local foods movement. AWESOME!

Doubt

I recently saw the film Doubt, starring Meryl Streep, Philip Seymour Hoffman and Amy Adams. This movie was really well done, the acting was fantastic, it exceeded my expectations. As implied in the trailer, Sr. Aloysius, played by Streep, is the principal of a Catholic school in 1964 and develops suspicions that Fr. Flynn, played by Hoffman, is developing an “inappropriate relationship” with a young male student. Throughout the film we never see anything conclusive, we don't know for certain who is guilty of which sin. The priest argues that the principal hates him because he is trying to bring new ideas into the church,to develop more personal and friendly relationships with parishioners and students. During one scene Fr. Flynn is at a table surrounded by 13 and 14 year old boys who are expressing their concerns about dating. What if a girl turns me down? What if all the girls turn me down? the priest explains that while a boy has the right to ask any girl out, the girls have the right to say no. the trick is not to take it to heart.

This scene is one that endeared the character to me. I think that young men do need role models beyond their fathers, men who can take an interest in them, take their concerns seriously and pass on whatever wisdom they can. This piece of wisdom particularly warmed me up, since I've noticed more and more young people struggle with this idea of "they have the right to say no". for more on this subject, see my next post. At any rate, it was easy for me to look at Fr. Flynn and say, yeah-this guy is trying to bring some humanity into the church, good for him! At the same time, I came of age during the recent sex abuse scandals in the catholic church, I went through the new trainings for volunteers and had a deep sense of paranoia instilled in me. Although the agency I work for has no policies on the issue, I am still very cautious about being alone with students or putting myself in any situation where I could be accused of something that would destroy my career. Many tools used by sex offenders are also tools I use to gain the trust of the young people I work with. The main difference is intent, and that I never try to break the relationships students have with other adults. But it is still enough to keep me nervous.

Having those concerns so much a part of myself, I also sympathized with Sr. Aloysius, who I gradually warmed to throughout the film. Streep did a fantastic job, of course, letting her character's little humanities peek through the cold exterior. This is a woman who cares for the people in her charge and takes her role as protector very seriously. She will not let the nuns in her care come to any harm and is determined that the students at her school develop the strength and discipline they need to survive as adults...we could use a little more of this attitude in our schools today.

In the end, I have my suspicions, but I do not know if Fr. Flynn was a pedophile, if Sr. Aloysius was a change-fearing schemer or if both were true. What I do know is that even we we are acting on the side of justice, when we take those big actions in order to do good, we never know for sure if it was the right choice. Those are the decisions that can haunt us forever.

They like me, They really like me!

I visit a local middle school every week to meet with a small group of eighth graders, all of whom I adore, by the way. Last year I was at this school for two weeks in May, talking with their sixth graders for our Learning about Me program. I was there last week and as I left, there was a group of students standing by the front door waiting for their rides. One boy looked at me for a moment and said “Hey! You’re that sex-ed teacher aren’t you!” The rest of the students-most of whom were seventh graders I had taught last year- turned and looked and a few other kids said similar things. I stopped and talked with them for a minute and then went on my way.

I have to admit, I felt pretty cool.

Really?

Time just announced their Person of the Year on the Today Show. To no one's surprise, it was President-Elect Barack Obama. The shows hosts asks what the President-Elect's reaction was to be given this honor...really? The man was just elected to be the President of his nation...and we expect him to clap and squeal at being named Time's Person of the Year? Particularly ridiculous when you consider that every President since Herbert Hoover
has been named Person of the Year at some point. Sigh.

These are my feelings about today's weather

http://theducks.org/pictures/do-not-want-dog.jpg

Twitter

This summer I attended a meeting where I heard a gentleman speak about a Teen Pregnancy Prevention Program in southern Illinois. They use MySpace to interact with the kids in their programs, and suddenly, a floodgate was opened. My boss was intrigued by the idea of using MySpace and I volunteered to set this up. In August we had a MySpace tutorial at my cubicle, where I showed 5 co-workers how to use the accounts I had created for them. I've been playing with ways to use the blog feature to keep kids thinking about the things we talk about in groups and really enjoying the ability to communicate with them in a more casual fashion than calling or writing them.

I'm also on a committee that organizes an annual conference for junior & senior high school students and by agreeing with another member that a website would be useful for our group, I became the website committee. I've now created a googlepages website, which I am pretty proud of, given my absolute lack of talent for this sort of thing. I've also purchased domain names and created MySpace and Facebook profiles for the conference and read dozens of articles about using social networking within nonprofit groups. Last month my boss volunteered me to join the website redesign committee for my agency and I'm thinking about how I am going to restructure my department's presence on MySpace next summer to make our staff available to every student that hears a presentation or attends a group(last year we served 1,356 through presentations and 539 through ongoing group services).

And now I've made a Twitter account. I'm not sure how well we will be able to use Twitter, either within the agency or the youth conference, but I plan to do lots of looking around and playing with my personal account in the next few weeks. I am just amused that I've become the go-to person in my office for this kind of thing, even in college, I was never a huge Facebook person and I didn't even own a computer until I was 20 years old and Chris gave me a hand-me-down machine that he'd put together.

So has anyone heard of a group that has successfully used these sites for non-profit agencies? Any tips or suggestions for me?

Oh those 6th graders...

I realized today that my job involves two very sensitive topics: talking to kids about sex and telling parents how to raise their children. It is no wonder, then, that I am filled with adrenaline and nervous energy before every appointment and come home wiped out many nights . You'd think I'd get used to it, but nope, still agitated and flushed most of the time.

Last week was ... something. I did Learning About Me all week, although only for one class period.This is the program for 6th graders and it was fun, as usual. By the end of the week i was in love with the kids, I felt like i really knew them individually. The highlight of the week was Thursday.. At this point, we've talked about puberty and the kids are warming up, they usually begin tot realize that I will take them seriously by this point. We were talking about types of contraception, and the group was really fixated on whether a woman can get pregnant in specific scenarios. One young lady had just asked about homosexual couples and a boy in the back raised his hand. Thankfully, i walked back to his desk and he asked "what about if two men and a woman are having sex and one man is in the front and another is in the back, can she get pregnant?"
The other kids did not hear his question(they were still in a bit of an uproar about the idea of homosexuality) and honestly, I addressed only the minimum the question required. I usually pride myself on answering any and all questions truthfully and openly, but I don't usually get threesome questions asked to my face. I have gotten them before, but always on a piece of paper. The hardest part was the kid's sincerity, he was not asking to get a reaction out of me, but genuinely wanted to know. In case you were wondering, my answer was walking to the front of the room, shouting "OK, Brian asked a question about a woman getting pregnant during a very specific sex act and I want to explain this to you guys again." I got out my Female Reproductive System Poster(to the groans of the class) and pointed out that anytime sperm gets near a vagina, pregnancy can occur. I freaked them out with the old 'even if you don't have sex!" story and and got a debate started about whether sperm are alive. A successful diversion, I think.