Yesterday, on Friday, I finished the first course in NYCTF training at Pace University. It was ED 630: Adolescent Development, which was easy and time consuming (9am - 4pm every weekday). We read Random Family in two weeks and wrote daily one-page reflections about it. We learned how to make lesson plans and practiced teaching. We observed classes at Pace High School. I did interviews at the High School of Sports Management and the ACORN High School for Social Justice. Neither school called me back, including the school from last week, the EBC High School for Public Service in Bushwick. I would not like to work at EBC because they want me to teach Earth Science along with Living Environment, which would be too time consuming and not allow me to do a high quality job teaching either subject, not mentioning that I know nothing about Earth Science. ACORN has a ridiculous amount of teachers getting Unsatisfactory ratings (over 35%), which is due to poor teacher assessment by the administration. Therefore, the High School for Sports Management is the only school where I would like to work, although I know nothing about motivating students in sports management. I’m not worried. I’ll do more interviews in the coming weeks and there’s an upcoming job fair.

The last day in our ED: 630 class. Classes are grouped by subject area. All my classmates are science teachers in middle or high school

About half of my classmates are recent college graduates. Many people dropped out of PhD programs because their research was not going to well. One person dropped out of Medical School. Jan Dolle resigned from staff with Here’s Life Inner City (Campus Crusade for Christ). I like talking with Jan, because she is knowledgeable about Christian social justice and very caring. She invited me to a cook out. Others ended jobs elsewhere.

This cut-out poster is part of our final exam for the class. Welcome to graduate school!

We watched short films made by students about, “What makes a good teacher.”

Lastly, my appeal to work in a high school for my five-week summer school assistant teaching was rejected. I will start teaching in P.S. 328 Phillis Wheatley School on Monday. I’m thrilled to assistant teach in this East New York school, because this is one of the highest need of the high-need schools/regions in NYC. I’ll probably never again have an opportunity to work in a preK-8th grade school.

Originally published at Interconnectedness. Please leave any comments there.

I just completed my first week of NYCTF. On Monday there was a three hour reception with at Avery Fisher Hall. All of the June 2007 Teaching Fellows were present (over one thousand people). It is the only time all the fellows are together. We received lots of useful books and other materials like a NYCTF calendar, bag, keychain, highlighter and pen.

Tuesday through Friday I’ve had classes at Pace University from 9am to 6:30pm (Friday classes ended at 4pm). It takes me one hour to get from Richmond Hills, Queens to Pace University, Manhattan. Everyday for homework we have to read about 80 pages from various sources and write at least one essay. It is about 14 hours of work per day including travel and homework.

Yesterday on Friday, I interviewed at H.S. 545 EBC High School for Public Service in Bushwick. I was invited for a second interview. Some schools have three or four interviews before they hire a teacher, whereas other schools may have only one interview. I interviewed with the dean of the school who was also a science teacher. She seemed very caring and educated me on many issues in teaching. She talked more than me. She liked that I had research experience because they wanted to participate in a regional science competition.

This morning I discovered that I will do my five-week summer school teaching in P.S. 328 Phillis Wheatley School in East New York, Brooklyn. This school is pre-Kindergarten through 8th grade. I plan to teach high school, so I will appeal to teach summer school in a high school, because it would prepare me better come September. Here’s an overview of this school from insideschools.org.

What’s special: Free summer camp; new playground with track and field.
Downside: Frequent disruptive behavior.

Children who learn at PS/IS 328 deserve a Purple Heart. They are courageous, strong, and intelligent, and fight to get an education. Frequent assaults and misbehavior at the school result in an average in-house suspension rate of 18 students per day, and many students who remain in class sleep, crawl on the floor, hide under tables, chat, and curse. Some teachers aren’t much better.

While teachers yelled “sit down,” “be quiet,” and “get over here,” (one teacher screamed continuously for three minutes), students shouted “shut-up,” “get away from me,” and “I hate you.”

With an overwhelming desire to learn, one student in the 7th grade pushed his desk away from his classmates and sat alone. “I don’t like sitting in the group because they talk too much, and I can’t concentrate,” he said with frustration and sadness. “I don’t like this school.”

In fall 2003, Principal Douglas Avila arrived at PS/IS 328 to greater chaos. According to Avila, fights broke out daily, some administrators were unsupportive, and the school had no counselors. In response, Avila made numerous changes: He hired a behavior management specialist to work with both teachers and students; brought in two graduate students studying guidance counseling to work with detention students; reduced class size in kindergarten, 1st, 2nd, and 3rd grade to 20 students; extended the school day to 5:30 p.m.; hired new administrators; and added reading specialists for grades 1-4, and a New York University tutor for kindergarten. Avila has also sought to make teachers more accountable for what goes on in the classroom: In cases where only one student passed the state exams in a class, he demoted the class teachers to cluster teachers, that is, teachers of non-core subjects. He also brought beauty to deteriorating bathrooms. After an artist painted a mural in a boy’s bathroom, the vandalism stopped. “They started to respect the bathroom,” he said.

Still, he says, he needs more time — and more resources — to turn the school around. “I have one guidance counselor,” Avila said, “but what I really need is ten.” Fourteen percent of his students are homeless, the others live in public housing, and a few teachers voiced concerns about the effects of second-hand crack smoke on their students.

The school has several important strengths to build on. Some dedicated teachers use their expertise to engage students in exciting lessons and stop class disruptions. Their classrooms are elaborately decorated with student work, and they have larger class libraries. In one 5th grade class, student work was posted with cheerful stamps that said, “nice job” and “good work.” Essays and poems were printed on colorful paper with festive decorations. In a 2nd grade class, the children were excited about writing on whiteboard slates to solve math problems. As the teacher dictated a math problem, each student wrote the computation and solved it. Students then proudly raised their whiteboards, and one student explained the problem-solving process.

The school also benefits from its new basketball court, playground, and track and field. Music, drama, and step clubs are offered to the older grades during lunch. Additionally, there is a summer camp for 30 students in each grade. Held every weekday from 8:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. between June and August, the program offers exciting activities, including overnight camping for the younger grades and out-of-state trips for the older students. Children who participate in the Groundworks after-school program receive preference in admission to the summer camp.

Originally published at Interconnectedness. Please leave any comments there.

Read my notes and see my photos from Sojourners' Pentecost 2007.

Speakers and workshops to explain how to put poverty on the agenda of our Church

Rich Nathan, a pastor from Vineyard Church said that no church will refuse to serve the poor, but a church will refuse a change of vision. So, if you want to help the poor, lead by example and your church will follow.

Shane Claiborne inspired my specifically. Have you heard of Shane Claiborne? He traveled to as part of the Christian Peacemaker Teams (CPT) to end the war, lives in an impoverished region of Philadelphia to serve the poor, advocates many ideas to help the environment, is a vegetarian and worked with Mother Teresa in Calcutta. Shane talked about the New Monasticism. Have you heard of the New Monasticism? Have you heard of the Christian Community Development Association (CCDA)? Have you heard of John Perkins?

The New Monasticism is living in a small intentional community in the abandoned places of the Empire, such as the inner city and other places where God’s children are oppressed. It’s “New” because this monasticism is for both celibate singles and married couples. Christians don’t start new churches, but breathe life back in the old shell of the Church. The three R’s of Christian Community Development explain this well.

The first R is Relocation. Jesus did not live in the suburbs. He neither gave charity nor did community service once in a while. His ministry was incarnational. He gave up his position of prestige to serve and know the most oppressed with ALL His life. It is more popular to give charity to the oppressed than to live with the oppressed. The problem with Christianity is not that we do not serve the oppressed, but that we do not know the oppressed. We won’t have a revival until we know the least among us.

The second R is Redistribution. Once we relocate and build a relationship with the oppressed, we will naturally want to help our friends. This will cause a natural redistribution of wealth. The poor will have their needs met, and the rich will realize they really did not need very much.

The third R is Reconciliation. Once we are living with the oppressed and sharing with them, there will be reconciliation among the different races, nations and social classes. It is the Kingdom of God.

The three R’s of Christian Community Development are (ALL TOGETHER): Relocation, Redistribution and Reconciliation.

The way we put poverty on the agenda of our church is by putting poverty on the agenda of our own life. Jesus did not go around forcing people to follow his agenda. Jesus even told people to keep his agenda a secret. Serving the most oppressed starts with community service, but it is much more than community service. It consumes all parts of our life. God is either Lord of all or Lord of none. Once we start loving God and others with all our lives, it is contagious.

Speakers and workshops to explain how to put poverty on the agenda of our Congress

Covenant for a New America tracts

Candidates Debate

Third day:

Lobby Day training

March from Church to Capital building

Compared to the January 27 Anti-War rally, people did not yell angry chants, but sang beautiful Christian songs of love. It was amazing.

Rally by the Capital building

Met with the aides of Senator Levin, Senator Stabenow and Representative Dingell

Aides told us that they were happy to hear from us and prefer hearing from us more than lobbyists.

I had a big question coming to this conference.

Do Christians try to influence their politicians? Would Jesus lobby His congress?

I’m going to talk about two main ideas I learned during Pentecost 2007.

First, talking with our politicians is not lobbying, but instead community service.

Second, Christians do much more than community service; Christians challenge the Empire, the state religion, by building the Kingdom of God.

What Would Jesus Do (WWJD)? Jesus would talk with politicians as far as they would listen, and at the same time He would build God’s Kingdom that consumes the Empire.

Talking with your politicians is community service, not lobbying. We were not lobbyists, but constituents. Lobbyists try to influence all politicians, but constituents only talk with politicians that represent their community. As an analogy, imagine you are at a university. Your professors are your congresspeople. Your classmates are your community. Your classes are your district or state. You are a constituent in your class. If your professor is hurting someone in class, you have a responsibility talk with your professor. A lobbyist tries to influence classes they are not a part of. Imagine if an unwelcomed stranger tried to influence your class. You probably would not like it. But if one of your classmates suggested a way to improve your class, it would be helpful and appropriate. You can send emails or letters to your professor or congressperson, but sometimes it is necessary to go to office hours. That’s what we were doing. We were going to office hours with our congresspeople. We went to office hours because God’s children are hurt by the policies of congress.

There are 9 million uninsured children in . It would take $50 billion over five years to decrease this number by more than half. Congress spends $10 billion per week, $10 billion per week!, on the war in . Instead of 5 weeks of fighting, we could protect millions of children from disease for 5 years. Yet, there is a debate in congress about sources of funding for this!

Politicians care what others think of them more than most people. Speak up! To proclaim the Gospel is the opposite of being silent. We worship God by giving a voice to the oppressed. It is a true church service. Before talking to my congresspeople, people mentioned that we ought to be like the widow who kept coming to the king incessantly until he agreed to her demands. Christians are holy gadflies. However, a king is not an elected official. Our elected officials want to hear from their constituents. When we speak with our politicians, it is community service, rather then just making demands.

Although Christians do community service, community service is far from the Kingdom. Christians challenge the Empire by building the Kingdom. Our hope is not in an improved Empire, but a radically different way of life: the Kingdom of God. This is exemplified in the three R’s of Christian Community Development. Talking with politicians is damage control. We want the Empire to be the least impedance to the Kingdom coming. Our hope and lives are in the Kingdom. Peace be with you. Shalom.

Originally published at Interconnectedness. Please leave any comments there.

After participating in Cru for the last four years, listening to Rob Bell and reading Shane Claiborne's Irresistible Revolution, my view of church has changed a lot. Real church is in the small groups of people, not the large gatherings. Rob Bell calls his Sunday assembly of people, "Gatherings," instead of, "Church." He calls the small groups, "House Churches." Essentially, the "small group leaders" are church planters.

This would mean that communion, offerings, the elders and other church functions should be administered in the house churches, not the gatherings. However, most small groups do not get organized enough to fill these functions, so the gatherings administer these functions by default. Gatherings would be like conferences, parties or celebrations. I've seen four categories of small groups.

1) Mixed up small groups for non-neighbors and different genders to know one another (e.g. Harvest Mission Community Church).
2) Unordered small groups for anyone to know anyone (e.g. Shalom Community Church).
3) Clustered small groups for neighbors and same genders to know one another (e.g. Cru).
4) Semi-clustered small groups for neighbors of all different backgrounds to know one another (e.g. Mars Hill, The Simple Way).

While small groups are generally a step toward house churches, categories 1 and 2 are better suited for making a cohesive gathering, and categories 3 and 4 are better suited for a cohesive house church, because people living in the same community are usually more connected.

The amount of small groups in American Christianity is growing. About ten percent of all church-goers are in small groups.

As small groups grow, the amount of house Churches grows too. To share possessions in common and know one another deeply, house churches are the way. The early century Church was based on house churches.

Originally published at Interconnectedness. Please leave any comments there.