Jana's Reflection on Mary's Center Dating Violence Workshop

It is no secret that I am typically involved with working with the black youth of today so it was with great pleasure to stretch my knowledge base to plan a lesson with my fellow student and friend on dating violence for Mary’s Center. I will say that planning the lesson was not without fear and apprehension. I always want to make sure that everything that is prepared is conveyed in way that is meaningful and well received. One of my fears was that the youth at Mary’s Center wouldn’t trust me (an outsider) with the information about dating violence that Katy and I had so diligently prepared to teach.

Katy and I made a solid team. She worked on the mapping and I was able to work through details with the choices of the handouts with the lesson plan as well as the photo voice. I kept going back and forth about showing a clip from the movie “Enough,” but I wasn’t sure if I should show it because in the end J Lo’s character kills her abusive husband. I felt like our short 45 minute workshop didn’t have the time to cover self defense as well as other questions that may arise from the video clip. I do think that the clip may have had a different effect from actually showing physical violence occurring. Showing the two photo’s of Chris and Rihanna embracing and then showing the photo of Rihanna after the beating did have a stark impact so I feel that the point of the exercise was realized.

Katy and I both arrive at Mary’s Center with plenty of time to prepare the “classroom” we did have a few technical difficulties and it would have been better to have those worked out with more time but I also feel like we really made it work.

Looking back I wish I could have had the ground rules written out for everyone to view and like Alis and Sarah said refrained from “shhhh shhhing” people. I actually don’t typically do that so I am not really sure why I started.

All in all I really enjoyed myself and learned a lot about myself and what I need to work on about myself as a teacher/educator I wish I could have spent more time getting to know the youth that were there and most importantly I would have from time to time just liked to have sit down and attempted to facilitate a more engaging open conversation.

Mary’s Center. . . THANK YOU for having me!!!!