It’s always stressful to do things that scare you, but, generally speaking, it usually helps you learn something. Last year, our NGO, Jojo's Sanctuary, was invited by Carmen Filbeck, the director of Lanna Theological College in Chiang Mai, Thailand, to come teach a course about child protection and trauma informed care to the seminary students there. The goal was to broaden the educational curriculum of the school and prepare the students to work with children and adults who may have experienced trauma as well as be a part of preventing those who hadn’t from becoming victims.
We were scared to try this at first because we had never done anything like this before! The semester lasts 15 weeks and we weren’t sure we had enough material to fill the time. And how would we grade? How could we be sure the students were understanding the material enough to teach others in their church or community? Would they even care about this class?
Well, we sat down as a team and made a potential syllabus to see if we could make it work. Carmen had asked us to teach twice a week so we had the idea of having the first day of class each week be the protection training we do with kids and the second day we would break the students into groups and they would practice teaching parts of the training in as if their classmates were children. This way, they could be evaluated not just by our team but by their peers as well. Our syllabus included not only our core curriculum of Children’s Rights, Safe/Unsafe Touch, Healthy Teen Relationships, Internet Safety and Positive Parenting skills but additional topics such as ACES and Resilience, Trauma Informed Care, Reproductive Health and how to create a Child Protection Policy for a church or community center.
Since these students will be going into communities who have largely experienced some type of trauma, we thought it was important for them to first understand their own trauma and how to build resilience so they could help others with their trauma as well. First, they took the ACES (Adverse Child Experiences) test (which you can find at www.acestoohigh.com). Then we taught ways to heal our brains from the negative effects of ACES, including writing to heal and art therapy. We then focused on how to build resilience to prevent harmful effects of ACES from affecting long-term health.
We also taught about Child Protection Policies and how to create one to make sure the children in your organization and community are safe from potential abusers. An important part of this was teaching how to respond when a child reports sexual abuse.
We started our class in November and finished with final presentations at the end of March. Each of the 3 teams had to find a location to present one of the trainings they had learned over the course of the semester. Since they all are required to work at a children's home, church or community center as part of their seminary training, finding a location didn't prove too difficult.
The semester started off a little rough, with the students not being very invested in the class and not paying attention. But as we neared the end of the semester we could see marked improvement in the students' focus and participation. Students that used to sleep through class were answering questions. Students who were too shy to speak in the first few presentations became more confident in themselves and were able to present (slightly) more comfortably. We also forged relationships with some of them on a personal level. We were invited to play on their team at the sports tournament they had with other Bible colleges and several came to us for advice or to share their stories of growing up in a children’s home.
The thing that really underscored the impact our class had on this group was a day when we finished early. Instead of letting the students free, we sat down and discussed something they were grateful for over the past year, despite COVID. We said it could be anything they wanted. But, the first student said they were grateful for our class and one after another, they each echoed that sentiment, with some saying they thought it would be a waste of time in the beginning but ended up finding it their favorite class of the year. It brought tears to our eyes to hear some of them talk about their feelings and the impact our team had on them in such a short time.
Unfortunately, there are only 3 seniors this year and they all have internship placements already or we would snag one for ourselves. But, we are hopeful that in the coming years we will be able to have continued relationship with the students and school. We are looking forward to seeing what great things these young adults will go on to accomplish. So, all that to say, even if you are scared of doing something new, try it, you never know where the journey will take you.
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