My Daily Grind

I thought I'd give a little rundown about where I'm working for the next 5 months.

My mornings from 8:30-12:30 are spent at the Saint Benedict Education Center, it's a program that includes "intensive case management, academic remediation, job readiness preparation, job development and job placement assistance." More specifically, my actual job everyday includes tutoring 1-on-1 English and math skills with refugees, assisting as needed in the classrooms, as well as running small job retention classes.

My afternoons from about 1:00-5:00 are spent at Sister Gus' Kid's Cafe, which is part of the Emmaus Ministries. The Kids Cafe is an after school program for kids in the inner-city schools, most of whom are coming from very poor and disadvantaged families. We provide the kids with dinner, and a safe space to spend a few hours after school. I'm in charge of managing the kitchen and volunteers that help prepare the meals everyday, as well as providing homework help with the kids, and overall just spending time interacting with the kids and playing.

Both of these jobs are very challenging, but so rewarding. I never thought in a million years I would be teaching and tutoring so extensively. But the participants at SBEC make it so rewarding to work with them. They are so eager to learn, they desperately want any kind of help we can give them. Right now, I'm working with a participant from Somalia everyday, he can speak English and hold up a decent conversation with the English he knows, but absolutely cannot read or write. He knows his letters, but can't make sense of them as sounds and words. I've been working with him for a couple of weeks now, and yesterday he recognized and read 3 words while I was working with him on flashcards trying to identify opposites. I was so excited I nearly danced around the room! On the walk back down the hall to the classroom, I told him how great he had done during our lesson. He told me that he felt like he could learn it now, like I was finally helping him make sense of this thing he has struggled so hard with. It's minor progress, and he has a long way to go before he's reading on his own, but it's a step in the right direction, and it felt awesome for both of us.

The Kid's Cafe was my first choice of ministry placement, and it had been from the time I knew I was doing this program. It's not easy, by any means, to work daily with inner-city, street tough kids. But there is something so rewarding when these kids drop their defenses, and start to trust you, and they just behave like a kid. Most of these kids aren't coming from much, and they don't always have the best life at home. But at the Cafe we give them a place to just be a kid, where they can be away from whatever troubles they face at home, school, or out on the streets. There's one little girl who I've made a really good connection with over the last week, she walks in everyday now looking for me wanting help on her homework before we go play about 1,000 rounds of mancala. She's a bright girl, and adorable as can be, but she has an extremely rough home life. It's heartbreaking to know what she comes from, but at the same time it makes it all the more special to me to spend time with her for a little bit everyday. It's the same with all the kids there, if nothing else, I'm a stable person who they know they're going to see 4 days a week. Some of them may never really get close to any of us that work there everyday, but they know we're there for them, and that's what matters.

Click here for a link to the Sister's webpage about their ministries to see a little more about where I'm working, as well as the other ministries provided by the Sisters.

To end on a completely different note, Gannon University has been hosting some Tibetan Monks this week for a series of presentations. They are also constructing a sand mandala to be dissolved in Lake Erie. Alyssa and I made it out to see the Monks on Monday night with a few of the Sisters. Monday night's presentation was on song, dance and chant, and it was an amazing experience. I was able to take a few videos of the Monks chanting, here's one of them: