Today we finished the two sessions of Active Parenting Now in 3 - the class for parents of children ages 5-12. The classes finished smaller than they started, which, given the make-up of the classes in the first place, was not entirely surprising, though still a bit disappointing. Part of the challenge with this class was that we had a number of teachers from the community that did not have children, so there was this "tension" of making it applicable in the home and classroom at the same time, which was hard. In addition, none of the teachers were involved in the church. We had 4 teachers in our evening class, and none attended this final session. Both the morning and evening class had a small core of committed parents who were doing their best to understand and apply what they were learning.
We met with one woman after the morning session who had attended all three and was very interested in the church making this available to more people in the community. She is a trainer of teachers and brings in teachers from the United States all the time and puts on seminars for teachers in public education. She had ideas on how to improve the material to make it more applicable in Turkey. She may be a key resource for the future of this program as an outreach of the church into the community.
Tomorrow we will finish the last Teen class session and debrief our time here with Pam. It hardly feels like we've been here long enough to be almost done!
Charlie
AM Class from L to R:
Hans, Tan Şule, Ron, Burçak, Charlie, Nurcan, Pam
PM Class, from L to R:
Anne, Ron, Ruslana, Pam, Eda, Karen, Charlie
