Hello friends and family. We have arrived and are all safe, happy, and excited to begin the semester. The students are up at El Piscacho ensconced in Spanish lessons, and I have taken the morning to come down to La Concha and sit in a cyber. Perhaps a little translation is necessary. El Piscacho is the name of the group site where we are getting our language lessons. It is part of the Spanish school La Mariposa, the main part of which is located in La Concepcion or La Concha to the locals. A “cyber” is an internet cafe, although few of them actually serve food. The students are Avery, Jill, Ryan, and Sarah from Ithaca College, Devin from Unity College, and Katie from Penn State. I am Neal, faculty and wrangler for our little group.
This is my fifth time leading a CELL Central America semester. Though many of the activities we do and the places we visit are the same, each semester is unique. That uniqueness comes mainly from the personalities of each semester’s students and therefore the personality of the learning community that they create. The depth of the learning during a CELL semester is based on creating an effective, engaged, and supportive student community. Since the overall theme of the semester, and indeed of all CELL programs, is investigating how communities can work together to create a sustainable world, it is appropriate that we pay close attention to the community that we are creating amongst ourselves.
Early in every semester we do an activity called ‘How Shall We Live Together’ to create shared values for our newly formed learning community. To start, we individually think about past groups that we have been part of and what has made them effective and supportive or not, and we come up with four or five aspirations or values that we think will best serve us in creating our own community. Then students pair up to discuss their values and come up with a common set. From there the whole community comes together to winnow all the proposed values down to the final four or five, which then become the touchstone to which we return repeatedly over the course of the semester to evaluate how we are doing as a community. For me, the exercise itself has two great outcomes: first, we get to see how frequently the same values show up on everyone’s lists; second, though every proposed value is worthy, having to choose our top values leads to a great discussion about what we, the particular individuals on this program, think will best help create the community we desire. This semester’s discussion ended a little differently than I am used to — everyone was so so excited by our final version that we broke out into spontneous high fives.
So without further ado, our community values:
-Listen and speak with love.
– Seek awareness through presence.
-I am because we are.
-Hold your judgements lightly.
-Be honest with yourself and others.
With the overall goal of the semester: To encourage flourishing.
Though most of our values as written are straightforward, a couple are distillations that might require explanation to those who didn’t participate in our discussions. “Seek awareness through presence” encourages us to always show up and to be aware of what is going on inside of us, in our community, and around us in the experiences we are having. “I am because we are” reminds us of the support that community gives us and our responsibility to contribute to the healthy functioning of that community.
With values like these I think we are aiming to create a wonderful, connected community that will support us in getting the most out of our semesters. The journey has just begun, but I have a feeling that we will succeed.