Teen Leader Reflection

On August 23rd at 7:00 am (almost a month ago already...yikes) our plane touched down at Logan Airport. Yes, that's right, 7:00 am. So, if you do the math (which I always love doing) you would realize that we left the D.R. at around 3:00 am. We had decided that it wasn't worth it to get a couple hours of sleep before leaving San Cristobal for the airport so we had Carmen and Frank just drive us there around 11:30. But, we were so early for the flight that the Jetblue check-in area wasn't even open... but let me stop there because that surreal night wasn't really the point of this entry.

So, let me start again. On August 23rd at 7:00 am our plane touched down at Logan Airport. On the drive from the airport back to our house, as we all went through a little culture shock --augmented by our sleep deprived state -- Tanya and I realized that we hadn't really come to any closure about the camp. We felt a need to talk about the experience to make sense of it all and we also felt a real need to get all the teen leaders together again to hear what they took away from the whole experience.

So, yesterday, we had all the teen leaders and their parents over to our house for a debriefing session.  We had them sit on the floor in a circle, asked the parents to sit around them and then led (you hearing this Ms. Burchenal) them in a socratic seminar.  We asked questions like:
         -  In what ways were the campers' lives impacted by the camp?
         -  What different views of Dominican society did you see?
         -  What were your greatest challenges and your greatest successes?
         -  In what ways will your experience in the D.R. impact the way you interact with people from different cultural/racial backgrounds in the United States?
         -  How did your experience in the D.R. affect the way     you view your own culture/country?
Yet again the students amazed us as they gave thoughtful, articulate responses to all of the questions.
I learned that the teenagers had a newfound appreciation for the amenities that we take for granted here; that they realized that technology is not the be all and end all of personal entertainment and that often dependence on technology stifles creativity; that they had newfound respect, patience and understanding for immigrants to the U.S. who struggle to communicate in English; that the idea of "personal space", an unambiguous aspect of U.S. culture, is not universal; that there are many commonalities between the Dominican and U.S. cultures and that the Dominican teenagers are exposed to many of the same cultural references as are the gringo teens.

Wow! It seemed like the teenagers actually learned what we set out for them to learn. At least, in words if not actions.  We'll see what happens the next time I tell my children to put down their cell phones and go outside and play.