wondering...

Are kids louder/more disrespectful because...

they're a different group of kids this year?
I'm older and crankier?
my discipline methods no longer work?
they're older and disrespectfulier?
I have a bad memory about how they've been before and they've always been like this?

I want each youth in this community to be unconditionally loved with no agenda. In theory, that's great. In actuality, someone SWEEP UP ALL THE POPCORN YOU JUST THREW ON THE FLOOR!!!

:)

talking to teens

I was able to sit in on Chap Clark's session at the National Youth Workers' Convention in Cincinnati last week. While waiting for everyone to show up, this was one of the videos he played. It's a classic look at a conversation with a teenager. Chap stressed that the important thing for parents to do is keep trying.

Anyway, here's the link to the video. I'm still perculating with thoughts from NYWC. When I get a chance to process and type, I'll blog more about it. Conventions like that are so crucial and important. I feel refreshed, renewed and reminded of why I'm here. :)

resolution

We had a meeting today before anyone got snacks in the Underground. I think it went pretty well. After much thought last night and today, I opted to have a meeting of the minds. We talked about good behavior, the need for rules and how frustrating it is to be one person cleaning up after several people.

And so the solution seems to be teams. The youth will be divided into teams and each day, a different team will be responsible for cleaning up at the end of the day. The team will get a point when they complete everything on the checklist. After getting 5 points, the team can pick from a list of rewards or come up with their own reasonable reward. Hopefully this will help and give the youth a sense of cooperation. Leaders will be junior high and high school youth.

As for me, I'm far less cranky today. The UG closes soon and then I'm going home for dinner before heading to the football game and back here for 5th quarter. If I can rope some kids into blogging from 5th quarter, I will.

Cheers. And thanks for letting me rant at you yesterday.

discipline... yuck!

My least favorite part of youth ministry is discipline. I know good things come from it, I know kids grow and eventually a light bulb should go on. I sincerely try not to be one of those cranky adults that always says "no" and yells at every little thing. I believe that positive reinforcement works better than negative. I believe that youth will live up (or down) to whatever expectations are set for them. And all of that is great in theory.

And then there are days like today.

We used a donation to get a popcorn machine. Huge cool fun improvement. And so we had popcorn in paper bags today. On 3 separate occasions I told the youth that they needed to throw their bags away when they finished their popcorn. I guarantee that every youth had the opportunity to hear this. There are 2 trash cans in the UG, conveniently located by the popcorn eating area. No big thing.

As the youth prepared to sign out, there were 7 or 8 either on the table, on the counter, or my favorite-- the one smashed on the ground by a bunch of spilled popcorn. And I said, "if I find popcorn bags on the ground or not in the garbage when everybody leaves, we will not have popcorn tomorrow."

"You have to give us a snack."
"I'll just bring my own."
"Fine, i won't come tomorrow."

Instead of addressing the actual problem-- a 30 second pick up of a few popcorn bags, the youth banded together in a stubborn declaration of entitlement.

So here's a real, not so cheery look at after school youth ministry. And I'm caught in the dilemma of how to handle this. There need to be consequences. There needs to be a major attitude change. There needs to be something.

I'm open to suggestions.

we will, we will milk you.

yeah. these kids are weird. i like them.

but cleaning is FUN

Only crazy people enjoy cleaning. Yeah, I said it.

But sometimes the UG gets so incredibly messy and rather than me spend hours doing something I hate, it's easier to talk a group of youth into spending minutes doing something they hate. Or so I thought.

Today as the kids showed up and signed in, I told them they would have to do one of the "chores" off of the board before they could have a snack. Chores were things like sweeping a part of the floor, cleaning off a table, dusting the tv room... nothing too strenuous. It was like pulling teeth, but all of them helped in some way and the improvement from before and after makes my heart happy.

I should have taken before and after pictures. Maybe next time.

Or I could be super scary and do before and after pictures of my office. Even with Halloween around the corner, that might be too much frightening for you to handle.

Tomorrow=FRIDAY! And a home football game which means 5th quarter. Which means all the clean will be made messy. But I'm sure we'll have a blast. Stop by if you're 7-12 grade. The Underground will be open until midnight.

Youth have control of their own blog

Yesterday Savana was the first UG youth to blog on the new UG Youth blog. You can check it out here: You can check it out here.
The gameplan is to let a different youth update it every day so people can see what happens from a youth perspective, instead of relying just on my voice.