Frazee Center

Yesterday the youth group took a trip to the Frazee Center in downtown Greenville. The purpose of the trip was to help under-resourced children with reading and math skills. As I've found in many situations like this, the group that we came to "help" actually blessed us more than we "helped" them.

I didn't take my eyes off the volunteer teacher on site; he was strong in many of the ways I wish I was strong as a teacher. You could tell the children respected the volunteers - yes sir, no sir, was their reply to all requests. They waited their turn and stayed engaged for long periods of time.

It's not a myth that all children are born wanting to learn. It makes me wonder when it snaps in a person to not trust authorities anymore, or to lose hope in themselves that they can be smart. I wondered if that was reversable in my high school classroom for the better or even the worse.

One of the stories the teacher began class with was called "Beautiful" which featured a young girl living in an poor urban setting. The moral of the story was realized when the girl erased the graffiti "Die" from a neighbor's door because the girl realized that she had control to make some things beautiful again.

I'm grow more skeptic every day but the actual learning and growth I witnessed at the Frazee Center yesterday renewed my faith in the moral that things can be made "beautiful" again.