It's really incredible to have that home base when you're traveling. It's awesome to get out there and be on the road, but it gets hectic after a while. It's really nice having that in the back of your head, I can go back to the village whenever it gets to be too much. You get the hospitality, but it's a different thing in the village having friends and family.
While I enjoyed traveling to Japan a lot, I really didn't get any of the group aspects on that trip. It was all pretty fractured. I was talking to Drew a lot and he was really talking up what Robbie does as far as the group aspect. I guess that was something I really wanted to have.
More than I ever could have thought. He has those prepatory activies: Neskowin. Light & the Dark. Walkabout, too. Pushed a lot of people to their limits. I've had classes with Rob where he teaches about community building and how important that period of vulnerability is to creating a feeling of group, of team. Pretty powerful thing.
The closest you come to that at all is High school sports. Different. With a sports team it has to be an objective for the coach and not enough coaches and mentors take the time to build that and realize its value. Which is something that Rob not only knows but really appreciates its value.
You definitely feel the hunger. As soon as it happens like the L& dark, in that aftermath of spilt emotions everybody feels how right it is. You feel that in the village, you feel that in the group. Teens want that connectivity, that closeness.
It's out the box, it's out of your comfort zone. It puts you in a place where you're in a foreign environment and everything is new and stimulating. And that's a pretty powerful thing for the first time. That can bring out a lot of good in people. It's all worth it. Gives you the freedom to find out your own answers.
Respect. He respects kids. It's one thing to say that and it's a completely different thing to practice it. Robbie understands that respecting students, that you can have as much to learn from students as you have to teach them. That's an important coexistence in a student-teacher relationship.
Pretty unique and powerful thing. I'd never really had a teacher like Robbie at all, and I'm sure every kid you talk to will say that.
That's magic. That's pretty indescribable. Everybody who's been remembers that. And everybody remembers leaving, too, and how hard that is. For everybody it's this long, drawn out sob fest. There's just something about that moment. It's like waking up. You don't want to leave that. It feels like it's a dream at that point.
The experience gives you more depth and makes you question yourself and assumptions that you have made. It was an important process for me. It's not something I necessarily understood on my first trip on or my second or even my third, but it's a process. Coming to understand how that first trip changed me. It's not something that really ends. It's not made it easier, definitely more complicated to speak frankly, but that's a good thing. That's important. That's what it's all about. I don't think life's supposed to be easy. It doesn't make anything easier, but it makes it more worthwhile, more fulfilling. It's about questioning yourself. It shakes what you think you know. That's an important thing. That's critical…for people that I want to know.
Now in the little wat next to the restaurant there's a massive radio tower. Every kid has a cell phone. But that's not unique to the village, that's not our influence. Pretty pervasive at this point.
An experience that's outside themselves. An experience that so completely foreign to the experience they've had their entire lives. I don't care if they've been traveling or out of the country, that experience is something that nobody's had before unless they do it. The group dynamic within the team, the connection with the kids—that's a valuable thing for a kid at such critical point in their lives. Volatile. That does different things to different kids.
It's the best thing that kids have in this community, period. Most enriching, most important. So ridiculous to me that he has trouble getting funding. It helps shape kids into more aware people—more self-aware, more world aware. Isn't that what we want from out kids? Isn't that what education should be? That's what it is: education. It's a different type. Arguably more important.
If you want your kids to be self-aware, critical thinking, interesting people, it's the best thing they can do.
It needs a way to sustain itself. Rob always talks about people being burned out on fundraising for it. People are tired of hearing about Thailand, they're tired of giving money to it. I think that's what Rob is looking for, that's what he wants to have some sort of self-sustaining program.
There's so much you could do with it. I always get jazzed when I talk about it. Big opportunity for students, who are interested and want to learn, want to apply themselves. I'd like to see it find a way to be self-sustaining. The importance of what he already does can't be overstated. There's plenty of ways that it can go. It's his vision, and that's one thing that I completely trust in him. It's about teaching, it's an educational experience.
I'll always go back. It's interesting to go as a chaperone, it's a positive experience. It's inspiring to help shape that.