Into Advent - C.A.R.E.

Happy Second Sunday of Advent, everyone.

I really feel like I've fallen of the face of the blogosphere (which I have, and which I have done not infrequently.) But, this time I've missed it more than usual. I have a good number of half-started, backlogged posts that I might try to get out today - but don't hold your breath.

So where have I been?

At work mostly. Work has been keeping me on my toes. This past Monday I did my first high school presentations for the WCC. I spoke with 5 sections of mostly sophomores for 2 days in a local public school. Our program - C.A.R.E. - focuses on Character, Abstinence, and Relationship Education (hence the acronym.) It's a really great program, if I may say so; and has really had a lot of success. As far as I know we're in most of the public and private schools - both high school and middle school - in this area.

Not bad.

My first couple days were very intense. It certainly didn't help that rather than giving me a prep period off (usually teachers don't teach every period in a day) the teachers decided to squeeze in an extra class.

By the end of the day I was beat and wanted to sleep for about a year.

The students filled out anonymous evaluations at the end of two; and I was really pleased to see that the program seemed to have a good impact on the them. While there were some disappointing ones:
e.g. "I can't argue with anything you said, I know you're right but I'm still going to be sexually active

there were some really good ones:
e.g. my boyfriend and I had a talk yesterday after the first half of the presentation, and we've decided to start over.

I was perhaps most surprised to read that most students enjoyed hearing the differences between love and infatuation.



They also really appreciated the sexual progression line and discussion of where to draw boundaries.

At the end of it all, I can't help but just feel really bad for all these kids, 15, 16 years old, who have no idea what their sexuality is for - a girl wrote she thought it was a game; a guy wrote he never realized that he could hurt a girl's feelings so much. But don't worry, the world isn't ending quite yet. A very large percentage of the evaluations came back thanking me for just reinforcing their previous decisions to be sexually abstinent.