Field Experience Reflections

Tales from Guatemala

Jillian Stein

Jill Stein LipsetYDL Field Experience 2

Looking back upon my chosen field experience as a trip mentor with Global

Leadership Adventures, I am able to reflect on the components that make travel

experiences dynamic and life-changing youth development work. At the same time, I

can critically analyze the program and point to areas of growth in the youth

development approach. My experience in Guatemala was enriching and challenging,

both personally and professionally. The experience helped me to realize how much

the quality of my work with youth depends upon how grounded and centered I am

in my own growth and personal development. The following pages will serve as my

reflection on leadership, both in my own style of leadership and how to assist others

in discovering their own.

The context of my field experience was unique given it took place in a foreign

land with a group of staff and young people I did not know. With limited time to get

to know one another and our approaches to youth work, the other two leaders and I

dove headfirst into the experience. Luckily, the three of us were well matched in our

philosophical outlooks and came up with progressive material to challenge and

provoke our participants’ minds and experience in the complicated country of

Guatemala. We decided to focus on the idea of storytelling, which coming directly off

the Philosophy Camp experience, was something I was excited to explore in this

context. The stories or narratives we all tell ourselves before even setting foot in a

foreign place effects our attitudes towards “new” and “different,” with our

expectations impacting the reality of what we actually experience. During my time

leading a GLA trip in Ghana the previous summer, the most powerful changes that I

Jill Stein LipsetYDL Field Experience 3witnessed with the teens were the moments when their preconceived notions of

what they expected Africa to be did not match what they were actually experiencing.

This pushed them to challenge and re-negotiate their worldviews around issues like

privilege and happiness. These travel experiences at a young age helps introduce the

complicated nature of living in a global society. The act of traveling and one's

reflections on the experience are inherently paradoxical. We marvel in the diversity

of people and landscapes, and also grasp the commonality of the human experience

around the world. We try on new versions of ourselves, yet are stripped down to the

core of who we are. Through challenges in language, social situations, cuisine, and

physical comforts, our comfort zones are forever stretched. We squirm with

discomfort to see others in suffering, turn to compassion, and reflect on what mark

we wish to leave on the world.

I personally struggle with the philosophical problems I see bringing

Americans to foreign countries in order to perform short-term community service

and experience an expensive “growth-opportunity.” This is why the idea of story

and narrative is very important to the process. When we begin to recognize and

bring awareness to the stories we have told ourselves, we begin to have choices in

what we believe and see around us. The same process can be used in pulling about

our own stories about self. Teens have the unique vantage point of having the

authority and opportunity to take charge of writing their own stories. This is the

magic moment when so much of life is still ahead of you, and you are just getting

comfortable in the driver’s seat. Giving them the tools of self and social awareness at

this age will allow them to reexamine their perspectives and choose how to navigate

Jill Stein LipsetYDL Field Experience 4the journey ahead. Travel is not necessary to accomplish this, though it often helps

to have the opportunity to step outside our daily lives so that we can return to it

with fresh eyes. A main goal of mine as a trip leader has been to safely challenge

participants to make connections of what they are experiencing in new places to the

economic, social, political, and ethical circumstances of our own country and

hometowns. While there are many lessons to be learned by being a visitor and guest,

we oftentimes can make the most impact in our own backyards.

I deeply resonate with the Proust quote that, “The real voyage of discovery

consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes.” New landscapes can

lead to new eyes, though, given the proper opportunities for reflection and

guidance.

The official vision and mission of Global Leadership Adventures is a world where

students are empowered to create positive change in their home communities and

around the world. The mission as a GLA leader is to inspire the next generation to

realize their potential to change the world and their role in it (Global Leadership

Adventures, 2012). Achieving that in under a month’s time with 37 young people

and three leaders was no easy task. We needed to hit the ground running and lay the

groundwork to build a team that would develop leadership, build relationships,

create capacity for transformation, and articulate a shared vision on how the

students wanted to change the world. The following excerpt is from the first page of

the student packets that myself and the other two leaders designed for our arriving

students.

Jill Stein LipsetYDL Field Experience 5

Because our vision is one of shared values, common purpose, and working together to

create change, this trip will allow us to develop a skill set and learn how to articulate

our values, define common purpose and work together to build strong, healthy

communities across the world.

You will be asked to tell your story of why you’ve committed to service with Global

Leadership Adventures, to define a common purpose with your fellow volunteers, to

organize yourselves as leadership team, to accept roles and responsibilities, to help

design leadership activities, to learn skills you will need to succeed, and jump into

action by planning your next steps when you leave here.

This is a unique and personal experience, but we will be always near to help and

support you when you need it. You are responsible for how successful it will be. The key

of this success will be your open and critical mind, kindness, empathy and, most of all,

your communication. This trip is about leadership—interdependent leadership. It’s

about learned to learning to take responsibility for engaging others to create purpose

in the face of uncertainty.

Please bring an “exploratory” sprit to your teammates—try new things, make new

friends, ask new questions. Learning is a life-long experience. Enjoy the adventure!

One of the first activities that I designed as an icebreaker for our group was a

story circle regarding an object from each person’s luggage. Everyone was asked to

choose something that they had brought that told something about their life story.

As we went around the circle, ordinary objects like notebooks, yoga mats, and t-

shirts were brought to life through what they represented to each teen. This process

helped us all to learn a little about one another and to begin to delve deeper into the

significance of objects and how we can apply that to our shared experience in

Guatemala. We had some common items from the Guatemalan culture, like coffee

Jill Stein LipsetYDL Field Experience 6beans, cocoa, a typical man’s shirt, and a woven mat. We had the teens guess the

meaning of these objects and then explained their significance in greater details

through multiple perspectives. This resulted in a lively discussion and a great

introduction to the complex nature of group travel and being a “stranger in a

strange land.”

The notion of storytelling and looking at objects and situations through

multiple lenses was a thread we wove through the whole trip. We often would break

out into smaller, “story circles” to create rich, meaningful, and democratic

discussion and reflection processes. These circles allowed each person an

uninterrupted space for sharing experiences and thoughts on a particular subject,

turning what might be divisive debate into a diverse and multilayered discussion.

These debriefs gave our groups a chance to reflect upon their experiences, learn

from one another, and continually improve the program. Some questions for a

debrief session:

What went well today? What do you want to do better tomorrow? What has surprised you? What do you want to contribute to our group? What are you hoping to “take home” from this experience? What have you seen here in Guatemala that reminds you of home? What have you seen here that is most different from home?

Another practice we adopted from Philosophy Camp was the daily

acknowledgments circle. At P Camp, we began the day with each person voicing an

“acknowledgment” to something or someone that touched them during the previous

day. I always found this activity to be a critical piece of building community and

Jill Stein LipsetYDL Field Experience 7encouraging sharing within the members of the group. It allowed for the active

reflection of our experience, helping to bring awareness and definition to each day

and give people an opportunity to show gratitude to others in the group. I brought

this to our GLA Guatemala program in a slightly different form, but to the same

effect. As our pre-bedtime end of the day tradition, we offered the students the

opportunity to express something or someone that impacted them that day. We

didn’t go around the whole circle, but made it a voluntary process in which usually

3-6 students participated in each evening. Students quickly locked onto this practice

as a key way to bring attention to the profound things they were experiencing in

Guatemala, as well as the relationships they were building within the GLA group. It

was fascinating for me to hear the students articulate these messages of gratitude

and awe. It helped me to see impacts that I would not have noticed otherwise, and

allowed us to gain further insight into the students so as best to serve them

throughout their trip.

Leading a trip in a foreign country always keeps you on your toes, stretching

you to stay flexible, positive, and ready to act in a moment’s notice. For example, we

had the unexpected experience of being caught in the middle of a political roadblock

between our hostel and town. We were staying up in the hills, about a 20-minute

drive from town, and the residents in the hills were boycotting the government’s

plans to put a more formal road through the area that would be used mainly for

army vehicles. This highly contentious situation made us refugees from our home

for two days and evenings, finding temporary residence at a local hotel and having

only the possessions that we had taken with us in what we thought would be a short

Jill Stein LipsetYDL Field Experience 8afternoon outing (some toiletries were purchased). We eventually made the

decision to cross the roadblock, and students had to keep their cool while we came

face-to-face with angry local citizens who wielded weapons and shouted words

many couldn’t understand. This complicated situation gave us the opportunity to dig

into the political, economic, and social atmosphere of the country we were in from a

firsthand perspective that students were emotionally attached to. This

unanticipated event was probably the most memorable moment of the trip for the

students, and we called upon all our reflection techniques to help them process it

from a multifaceted point of view.

In conjunction to the debrief sessions and acknowledgments, students were

given time each day to do private journaling, and opportunities to share their words

and experiences in large and small groups. Oftentimes, we provided students with

basic and general prompts to write about. Examples of these are:

Describe what you expect your first day of community service to be like. Describe what your first day of community service was actually like. What emotions did you feel?

What social issues have you witnessed in the community? What are your strengths as a leader? What areas would you like to grow as a leader? What is a goal you have set for yourself? How do you think you will achieve

it?

The journaling and debriefs were two ways that we offered students to

actively process their experience while it was happening. GLA has a clear mission to

develop leadership skills in students alongside and in relationship to their

community service and tourist experience in each country. GLA’s philosophy of

Jill Stein LipsetYDL Field Experience 9leadership is that leaders are made, not born. I agree with this, especially when we

open up the idea of what leadership looks like and how one “leads.” Getting into the

nuances with teenagers on what leadership looks like can be an exciting and

challenging process. Sometimes, it seems like the leader has to be the person in the

front of the room shouting the loudest. I worked with the teens, individually and in

groups, to show that leadership can be just as influential and powerful when it has a

different face. This meant leading by example, through one’s actions rather than

words. This was an especially important way of leading on the community service

project, keeping people motivated and displaying the efforts of hard work and

dedication to the task at hand. We were able to introduce language around different

types of leadership, like designated leadership, active followership, peer leadership,

and self-leadership. Each of these facets was integral to the success of our program,

and offered the participants opportunities to explore their own strengths and areas

of growth.

For example, active followership can be especially crucial on these types of

trips. Getting over forty people to get out of bed, dressed, organized, out the door

onto buses, working at community service sites, visiting tourist sites, and

participating in leadership curriculum takes an immense amount of buy-in and

teamwork from each person. Managing these logistical challenges of my role as trip

leader were constantly looming large, and it could make finding the opportunities to

support each student’s growth on an individual basis difficult. Behavior

management also becomes a very real part of the job responsibilities. If one student

has a bad attitude or refuses to participate, it effects the experience for everyone.

Jill Stein LipsetYDL Field Experience 10One of the realities on trips like these (where there are too many participants) is

that the more challenging students get much more attention and one-on-one time

with the instructor team than the students who are acclimating well. There was

supposed to be 25-person limit on GLA trips, so 37 students with 3 staff was simply

not enough. I often felt like I did not have the opportunity to build individual

relationships with students or mentor the teens that wanted to go deeper into their

experience. An important factor of the success of programs like these is keeping the

student-staff ratio low enough so that each student gets the support and mentorship

they desire, and staff feel like they are able to do youth development work more

than just triage problems.

Another important leadership practice that we developed on the program,

partly in response to the large number of students, was Student Leaders of the Day.

We introduced this expectation during our initial community meeting, and asked the

students to create the roles and responsibilities for the positions. They decided that

the Student Leaders of the Day (SLODs) would be groups of 3 or 4, taking on 24-

hour shifts starting with wake-up in the morning. They decided that the SLODs

would be responsible for wake-up calls, head count before leaving for community

service and after tourism excursions, writing the daily blog for the GLA website,

maintaining the daily activities board and calendar, and debriefing the large group

on agenda for the day. The staff would meet with each group in the evening to

discuss their experience, which would also be attended by the next group of SLODs

in order for them to get pertinent information of the day and give them the ups and

downs and “pearls of wisdom” from their experience. This helped us tweak the roles

Jill Stein LipsetYDL Field Experience 11and responsibilities and allowed us to go deeper with the students into their

leadership development in a small group setting. The students, for example, decided

early on that the SLOD roles should be on a 2-day cycle rather than just one day. The

first few groups agreed that it took the first day to get the hang of things, only to be

done right when they were starting to feel comfortable and gain momentum. The

second day allowed the student groups to gain confidence leading the large group,

get to rotate different roles within their small group, and take on more challenges as

well as enjoy more successes.

Supporting and mentoring the small group leadership teams was one of the

most rewarding parts of this program for me. Aiding the success of the small groups

helped the students to learn that leadership takes teamwork, and that attracting

other people to the causes you care about is a key skill to changing the world. The

GLA students are usually extremely smart, compassionate, motivated kids who want

to make a positive difference in their communities and abroad. I’ve stayed in touch

with many of them, and they are still posting about their GLA trips, keeping in touch

with their friends from the trip, and using the experience to inform their college

majors and extracurricular interests. I have taken a great deal away from my

experiences as a GLA trip leader that will inform my youth work practices in the

future. The programs have taught me about how to give the most of myself, while

emphasizing the simultaneous need for self-care in order to maintain the energy

and motivation to do the best job I can. It has taught me ways to empower young

people to take ownership of their experiences and make sense of them mentally,

emotionally, socially, physically, and spiritually. It has certainly raised many

Jill Stein LipsetYDL Field Experience 12questions regarding the design of an ideal abroad youth leadership program, and

made me grapple with my philosophical beliefs around such programs. I am

satisfied with my choice of this opportunity as my YDL Field Experience, as I believe

it truly tested my knowledge and skills in the field of youth development, and has

greatly informed my youth development approach and job choices since then. I am

encouraged that the students I have kept in touch with continue to draw meaning

from their travel experiences, and are identifying themselves as global leaders in

their communities.