Well I have lost track. Is it 40 days and a week since the feastday of Santa Bibiana? That was 2 December. The weather pattern has been seven days of rain, one day of sun, two days of overcast, and seven days of rain again (and again and again). It has been this way right up to the last days of the semester. Yet, the rain has not dampened the enthusiasm of these days: Obama, end of school, start of exams, great expectations for the upcoming months in spite of a broken economy. At least at the UPS among the student population there is a great deal of optimism and hope, rain or not. Maybe Santa Bibiana brings blessings with the raindrops.
My classes ended on 20 January… and of course the inauguration of Barak Obama was on my mind throughout all five classes that I had to teach. Okay, I did not do a lot of teaching, but I facilitated the group discussions and evaluations in the course on Youth Spirituality, and the student presentations in the Seminar on Storytelling the Faith.
The process that I used all along was to lecture for two classes (using powerpoint, media, music and text) and use one class for group discussion on the themes of each chapter of the text. In 36 class sessions, then, there were 25 hours for my presentations and 11 hours for group process.
At the end of each group process sessions, the groups would rapidly report to the whole class, and then one chosen from each group would email me a more complete summary of the group’s insights, concerns, debate, agreement… All these were posted on a class blog.Luis Daniél and Fabián (right) during group evaluation
Tuesday morning, as the absolutely last day of the semester, was more self contained. The groups mixed, evaluated, and made posters with the main points of their evaluation. Then they presented these to the whole group. Even this was very interesting. Groups with younger students or with those who have youth ministry experience, threw themselves into the concrete stuff; those that come out of religious life and formation backgrounds were more philosophical. The youth and youth ministers used slogans, symbols, icons and colours; the formation-bound used outlines and spoke more abstractly.
Leticia (Spain) & Grea (Philippines) craft poster while Krzysztof (Poland) gives input
These differences made the final evaluation day very rich indeed… and even a lot of fun, from what I could see in the reactions of the groups and individuals. I should have ordered pizza, but even without this final session was like a party!
The wrap-up for the seminar was more subdude, of course. The students sat around a conference table and presented the single paper that included the contribution of each. Again, the difference here was between the formators and the youth animators. However, I was very impressed by their research, their insights, their ability to make cultural bridges, and their sense of community among them. This class did end with a bit of a party, as I gathered them in my office for some Sambuca or Whisky, a toast, and a view of the Inauguration on my computer through streaming news.Leonard (Romania) & Mkail (Siria) explain poster points with Leticia (Spain)
My sense is that the classes and the courses went very well. Yesterday and today I have worked to get all the grading done. Now I have just returned from the registrar’s office, where I handed in my grades.
Yes! I have a lot of packing to do and I need to back up all my files as well so that I can bring the materials back to Berkeley with me. This means that I will just add a few photographs of the events of the last few days, and then throw myself into the packing process.
In the interests of speaking the truth (bocca della verità), I have to confess that I have very mixed feelings about returning to Berkeley. I would rather like to delay my departure for another five days or so, but this is not possible because of all the commitments for the new semester at DSPT and the ISS.
And darn!!!!! I never went to throw any coins in the fountain to assure my return to Rome! Oh no!!! (j/k).
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