Russel Smith the pro golfer at Bent Tree is providing an opportunity for one of our teens, Wyatt, to get instruction and training in all things golf. Here are a few words from Wyatt about this amazing opportunity.
“For those who don’t know me, my name is Wyatt and I’m 17 years old. I go to the Joy House Academy, and I love golf. When I say I love golf, I mean I’m always imagining I am on a golf course. Well, one day Mr. Steve told me I would get to work with the pro at Bent Tree. I was so excited! Now I go up there three times a week and hit the range. I would just like to say thank you to Russell Smith, the pro at Bent Tree, and to Mr. Steve for setting it up. It means the world to me. I can’t wait to be up there again.” |
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We’re excited to introduce this series of articles from our lead Teacher, Robin Whitaker. This is the second in an installment of articles about her journey.
Teaching at the Joy House Academy is not the typical teaching situation. I don’t prepare lesson plans and stand and deliver instruction and then grade papers with feedback. Instead, we use the Accelerated Christian Education [ACE] curriculum. Each student has workbooks in each subject. Instruction comes from those workbooks, as do practice and review, which they are responsible for scoring. Students take a test over the material after completing the workbook, and if they pass it, they move forward. If not, they redo the workbook. My role, then, is to supervise, to encourage, and to give help when it is needed. Having taught English for thirty years, I knew that I could assist in English and in social studies, and even in science when students were simply having difficulty understanding what they were reading. What I felt completely inept in was math.
Of course, I took math in high school and finished the math core curriculum in college, but once I completed those, I never looked back. The math I could confidently do consisted of grading tests and averaging grades. When I got here and students said, “Can you help me with math?” I just had to grin and say, “I wish,” and then direct them elsewhere. That changed with Nick.
Nick was one of the first students I taught here. One day he took an Algebra I test. In the middle of it, he said, “Ms. Robin, you’re just gonna have to give me a zero. I don’t know anything. To tell you the truth, I just copied answers out of the answer key.” I thanked him for his honesty and graded the test—zero, just has he had predicted.
I said to myself, “Surely if these 9th grade students can be expected to read these workbooks and understand the algebra instruction, I, a college graduate and teacher, can do it.” So I told Nick that I was going to try to go through the workbook and stay 6 pages ahead of him so that I could give him help when he needed it. He was agreeable.
As I opened the workbook and saw words like coefficient and variables, my heart started racing. I felt as if I were trying to read another language. I began to try to skim through the instruction, hoping that SOMETHNG would make sense. It didn’t. All I saw were incomprehensible words and numbers, numbers, numbers. I said to myself, “Oh, no! What have I gotten myself into? I don’t understand this instruction! How am I going to tell Nick that while I, a college graduate, cannot understand this, he, a high school freshman, is just going to have to?” Obviously, that was NOT an option.
I took a deep breath and reassured myself that I could do this. Because I could NOT make myself stop skimming, I forced myself to write down instructions. I wrote down examples. I worked through examples. Then, on to the practice. I did the work exactly as the students were expected to. When I went timidly to the answer key to find out whether I had done the work correctly, what a thrill it was to see that my answers were correct! And how frustrating to have to put an X over the ones I had missed. But when Nick came for help, I was ready.
What I discovered was fascinating. As I sat with Nick while he worked, I discovered that he experienced the very same anxieties and fears I had; he also wanted to skim. He even made the VERY SAME math mistakes I had made—issues with signs, or with understanding, or with simple math. I also discovered what I have come to find is a typical problem. Nick wanted to skip steps and do work in his head. When the easy problems were given, the ones that he could solve without using the procedure, he just put the answer down. As a result, as the problems got harder, he didn’t know how to do them. We both had to learn that every time we used that method, mistakes were inevitable. If we wanted to get correct answers, we needed to write down every step. Long story short—when Nick took the test a second time, he scored 78! We both learned that we could do it.
2 Corinthians 12:10 claims that “when I am weak, I am strong.” That sounds like an impossible contradiction. With Nick, I saw yet more evidence of the TRUTH of that claim. Because I was weak in math, I had the opportunity to experience exactly what these students experience—the horror of reading something that made NO SENSE to me, the knowledge that I would be taking a test over something I did not immediately understand, and the almost paralyzing anxiety that came with it. Had I been an experienced math teacher, I suspect I would have been far more frustrated at his inability to understand something so “simple.” Instead, God gave me the opportunity to experience the struggle and the compassion that accompanied it. As the students saw ME struggle, and I think it made them feel that their struggle didn’t mean they were dumb; it just meant that math is challenging. They saw ME strive to understand and to succeed, so they knew they could, too. God used my weakness to make me (and them!) strong.
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| Teeing Up for Teens
I'm excited to be able to share with you that we are hosting our annual golf tournament in October. We are grateful to again be partnering with our friends at Bent Tree for this year's tournament. We have all had to see so many events and plans canceled this year, it will be exciting to be able to come together for a fun event to continue making a difference in the lives of those we serve.
We have to limit our golfers to 80, so that means you need to act quickly to get your team into this year's tournament. Once we reach 20 teams we will have to end registration, so don't wait to get registered.
We have 8 high-level sponsorships, including our presenting sponsor, ranging in price from $1000 to $2500. Each of these includes a team entry and some great promotion for your business.
We will enjoy a good tome while competing for some great prizes in both our Putting and Chipping contests. Would you like a Big Green Egg? You'll have an opportunity to enter a raffle to win one as part of our tournament. Additionally we enjoy giving away some quality door prizes to all our golfers who participate through the purchase of mulligans.
As an important part of every year's tournament we will have a brief testimony from one of our present or past teens sharing their story. This is a great reminder of how you are making a difference by partnering with us through our golf tournament.
Included is a link to all the sponsorship/registration information. We hope to see many of you at Bent Tree on October 13th as we Tee Up for Teens.
Registration/Sponsorship Info |
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| Counselor's Corner
Everyone is unique. This is even true for brokenness. Sometimes we rely on our maladjustments unawares and brokenness becomes a habit. Why is it that people find it so hard to change their thinking and their ways?
Better the devil we know than to lose control. For clarity, imagine a person who is born with a visible disability. Well-meaning parents, family members and professional service providers may focus on the limitations so much that the individual becomes defined by their dis-ability. Every day of their lives they have “special needs” and need “special care.” They never experience themselves as anything other than “special.” They adapt to a world which exists to maintain them.
In the extreme case, their identity, worth, and purpose in life may be distorted by the seemingly endless focus on their needs. They live at the center of a system with others held in their orbit by the gravity of their need. Their needs bring the care-givers, without whom they fear abandonment or helplessness – or worse, oblivion. Without their need, the system flies apart.
Thus, for them, the need must be maintained at all cost! It’s a kind of enablement or co-dependency. The person has their anxieties quieted while the care-givers derive satisfaction from serving. The irony is that any intervention which might eliminate the need must not succeed. Thus THE Syndrome: life requires control over the movements of others; self-reliance is unacceptable precisely because the comfortable notions about who one is and how things are must be relinquished.
It is important to note that this comfort zone is not a contrivance. Neither the individual nor the service providers need to be conscious of these dynamics. It is just the way it is.
Maintaining the system can be very taxing. The push-pull of healing versus brokenness makes for erratic behavior, first moving toward a solution then retreating. Efforts to help often fail. Solutions may create “new problems.” The individual may panic when services are withheld or demands for autonomy are increased. The service providers may burn out. The individual may appear stubborn, childish and “spoiled.”
THE Syndrome is not limited to congenital physical conditions. Indeed, it does not require a “special” need at all. Any need suffices which captures others to its service.
Sin will do. We are all born sinners into a world ripe with evil. We are all spiritually disabled. Small wonder Jesus declares to Nicodemus, “if you really want the Kingdom of Heaven then you must be spiritually reborn.” Salvation is a radical make-over. It’s just the way it is.
Thus, the wordplay. THE Syndrome becomes the “Sin-drome” but the dynamics remain the same. We just can’t give up our self-centeredness which holds our world together. False beliefs remain “true” even in the face of facts to the contrary. Beliefs, even false ones, resist change. Believing that one requires special notice for brokenness makes it so. Believing there is no real solution to the brokenness provides permission to retain it.
We may seek help when our brokenness can no longer be contained. We probably do not understand the links between our troubles, our inherent sinful nature and the designs of evil. But more mysteriously, when we are wedded to our own misguided self-interest, we unwittingly fight against anything that would redeem us.
We must first relinquish our dependency on our own sinful nature, turning away not just from our misdeeds but more profoundly from our need to command the service of others. Christ’s victory for us over our unique sin begins with repentance but repentance requires surrender and surrender requires risk. We must risk our reliance on the safety and familiarity of our maladjustments or else we cannot worship a loving Father, identify with a risen Savior, rely on God’s provision, forgive the insults and assaults we’ve suffered, navigate this dark world or be of good service in the Kingdom of God.
We must first believe! Christ is still the answer. We need not fear oblivion. Our world will not fly apart. We will not be alone. We need not panic. Freedom from sin is real. We will gain a new identity in Christ. God awaits with our true purpose and worth.
Our “system” must have Jesus Christ at its center with His Father’s love holding us all in HIS orbit. Such trust makes us available to the only real help that is. The question becomes, are we willing? |
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| | The Joy House is currently seeking a married couple to be full-time houseparents in our girl’s home. No prior experience is needed, as training will be provided. The couple must have a strong desire to share Christ’s love with the teens and their families. Applicants must be married at least 3 years with no more than 2 children of their own. While modeling a Christian family, we ask the houseparents to provide care, nurturing, and structure for up to seven teen girls. They are supported by a five-person treatment team all focused on helping one another serve the teen and family in need.
To apply, candidates should email their resumes with a cover letter to Steve Lowe, Executive Director, and he will contact you. |
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