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What's the Tea with Ministry?
Welcome to What’s the Tea with Ministry!
Where we spill the tea on the Jesuit and Mercy mission at the University of Detroit Mercy! Bringing you mission-centered conversation through storytelling, reflection, and community connection all over a cup of tea.
What's the Tea with Ministry?
Tutoring Beyond Hours: Service in the City's Impact on Detroit Education
The Service in the City program stands at the heart of Detroit Mercy's commitment to educational equity and community engagement. This powerful tutoring initiative connects university students with three vital community partners—Loyola High School, La Casa Guadalupana, and Brilliant Detroit (now Brilliant Cities)—each addressing unique educational needs within our city.
What distinguishes this program from conventional volunteer opportunities is its thoughtful balance of weekly service and structured reflection. Beyond collecting service hours, participants examine the systemic issues behind Detroit's educational challenges. They learn startling statistics, like how 47% of Detroit students are chronically absent, missing more than 10% of the school year due to complex barriers including transportation difficulties, safety concerns, and economic hardship. Through guided discussions, students connect these realities to broader patterns of educational inequity while imagining practical solutions.
The experience transforms both tutors and students. As sophomore Chrestina Yaqoob shares, what began as a course requirement evolved into a passion project. At Brilliant Detroit's New Martin Park location, tutors don't just help with reading—they become consistent presences in children's lives, participating in everything from impromptu dance breaks to exploring hydroponically grown vegetables. When Christina misses a session, students immediately ask, "Where's Ms. Chrestina?"—a testament to the meaningful connections formed.
The program beautifully embodies Detroit Mercy's Jesuit and Mercy traditions through its commitment to both reflection and action. As program coordinator Becky Vires explains, "We don't act without reflection, and we don't reflect without action." Each semester, approximately 40 Detroit Mercy students participate, though there's capacity for many more, especially through Brilliant Detroit's numerous neighborhood hubs.
Ready to make a difference in Detroit's educational landscape? Visit University Ministry at the beginning of each semester to join this transformative program that goes beyond tutoring to address the root causes of educational inequality while building meaningful relationships with the next generation of Detroiters.
Welcome to what's the Tea with Ministry, where we spill the tea on the Jesuit and Mercy mission at the University of Detroit. Mercy bringing you mission-centered conversation through storytelling, reflection and community connection, all over a cup of tea Hosted by University Ministry and, typically, our student co-host, kateri she's not going to be able to join us today, so it's just me, anna Bryson, university Minister, I am really excited today for this episode because we are going to be talking about the Service in the City program, one of our signature programs run out of University Ministry, which is connected to our community-engaged learning opportunities here at Detroit Mercy. Today I'm joined by Becky Vyers, who's been on the podcast before. If you didn't listen to our episode at Christmas on Advent, becky was on with our co-worker Sammy and we just shared a lot of our favorite Christmas memories, so be sure to listen to that one. And we're also joined today by Christina Yacoub, who is a student here at Detroit Mercy.
Speaker 1:Becky Byers is a recent graduate of Creighton University, where she studied chemistry, art history, classics and theology. She's originally from the Chicago suburbs and currently is living in Detroit as a member of the Jesuit Volunteer Corps At UDM. Becky serves as our Associate University Minister, organizing a weekly tutoring program, which we're talking about today, monthly service, immersion days and other programming. In her free time, becky likes to play Dungeons and Dragons, listen to indie folk music and stress bake cookies. Also with us today is Christina Yacoub. She is a sophomore at Detroit Mercy. She's currently majoring in biology and is on the pre-dental track. Her hometown is Sterling Heights, michigan, and a little fun fact about her is that she loves to crochet.
Speaker 1:So I'm so excited to have you both on the podcast today to share a bit more about our Service in the City program. I'm just really excited that you decided to say yes to our invitation and be able to share about how cool this program is. I know, christina, you've been in the program for two semesters now, so that's really great. As a tutor and Becky is the person who basically makes it all happen is our background queen is what I'm going to say. She's making all the spreadsheets, all the organization, making sure our tutors and volunteers are getting to the service sites that they need to be at and helping with all of our communication.
Speaker 1:So as we start our podcast today, as we do on every podcast, I offered each of you a cup of tea. This is a part of our Mercy tradition. Catherine McCauley, on her deathbed, told the Sisters of Mercy to sit down and have a comfortable cup of tea together, and so we like to sit around the podcast table in our time of sharing over a cup of tea. This is our time to be in community with one another and to take on this tradition from our Mercy heritage. So I always ask what tea did you all choose to drink today? Who wants to go first?
Speaker 2:I'll go first. Yeah, so today I have a berry tea. I think it's mixed with blueberry, strawberry, some sort of berry blend. I'm not a big tea drinker, but I really do like this. It has like a candy aroma. It smells like a really sweet fruit aroma, which is pretty good.
Speaker 1:I can definitely. When I opened it in the office getting it ready, I was like, oh, this smells very nice it was really nice yeah, what about you, becky?
Speaker 3:mine is also berry. I went with a raspberry hibiscus tea.
Speaker 1:We're on a berry track today we went with fruits because, uh, today I finally am not having lemon tea or peppermint tea for maybe the first time on this podcast, big Big news, big news Tried something different. I'm drinking a blood orange tea. So, definitely in the citrus realm and all the fruity realms, I feel like it's because we're preparing for spring Berry realm, berry realm. Also. You said it's warm today, spring, yeah, it's particularly warm today. I think it was like raining all day yesterday. So very thankful that the sun is out and that we have some warmth, because it was also freezing yesterday. Freezing rain is the worst. So glad that we have some good weather. We're drinking spring. I'm going to call them springy teas because they're fruit teas. Anyway, super excited to have you both.
Speaker 1:The reason I invited you onto the podcast is obviously I want to share a little bit more about our Service in the City program. This is a program that we run out of the Office of University Ministry, so I'm familiar with it, but I don't engage in a lot of the work or like all of the pieces to make it happen, and I don't get to engage with as many of our tutors and volunteers. So I'm really thankful that you're both here to share more about the process From our website. I went into the archives of the UDM ministry website and found this particular sentence about what is our service in the city program on a very simple scale. But don't worry, I will give you all the chance to share what it is from your perspectives.
Speaker 1:But from our website it says Detroit Mercy is distinguished by our students and graduates who put their faith into action to create a more loving, just and inclusive world, whether it's for one afternoon, one week or all semester. University Ministries Service in the City provides students an opportunity to engage with our local community through service, solidarity, reflection and advocacy, which I think is a good little snippet, without all of the many details that go into it, of what our program is really about. But I'd love to start by asking the two of you to just share a little bit about what is Service in the City, and I might start with Becky as the person who coordinates all of our different service locations, our service sites and just the program at large. What is Service in the City?
Speaker 3:Yeah, Service in the City is our tutoring program that we run on a weekly basis for the entirety of a semester. We send students to three different placements, three different local partners within the Detroit community. So Loyola High School, la Casa Guadalupana and Brilliant Detroit, which is now technically called Brilliant Cities. The program has three reflective components as well as the weekly service. So an orientation at the beginning of the semester, two reflective meetings where we do a mix of education on educational inequality issues in Detroit and in the country at large, and then a reflection component about your own experiences tutoring, your own interactions with education, and then an end of the semester party wrap up pizza day, pizza day, pizza day, love it. Yes, we hope our students are engaged in action and at their sites and becoming parts of those communities. But also to get them to think a little bit broader about education and education access.
Speaker 1:Awesome. And then Christia from your perspective as a student who participates in the program, what has service in the city really meant to you?
Speaker 2:So for me as a tutor, this is my second semester doing it. At first I started off because it was a requirement for one of my classes, but then I chose Brilliant Detroit because I do love working with kids. I love working with my younger sister and my goddaughters, so it was kind of natural for me to work with kids and be able to read books and teach them, and it's just for me personally. I think it's a way to give back to the community I go to school in, because, yes, I don't live in Detroit but I am here five days a week going to school, so it's nice to be around the city and helping these students out when they need help for reading or math or anything like that.
Speaker 1:Awesome Thanks, and I know sometimes I'm thoughtful enough to send some of our questions ahead of time to our guests. Today was not one of those chances where I got to give them super early, but we had a few minutes before we started recording to look over some of these questions, and we were kind of realizing that many of the people who currently run our Service in the City program are not the people who originated it, and so I had the questions all lined up for what is the history of the program? And we kind of became aware that maybe we don't really fully know the whole history, but I do know that a huge part of our purpose at Detroit Mercy is our intention of being members of the city of Detroit, and so I know in the creation of the program we were very intentional. I'm saying we I wasn't involved.
Speaker 1:University ministry is the we I'm referring to was very involved in wanting to make sure that the service sites that we chose to be a part of were located in our city, talked about the issues that students in our city experience with access to education, with our history as an institution, being in Detroit for so many years, and connections to some of our other schools in the area, particularly I'm thinking of Loyola High School and really the mission behind creating that high school to serve the needs of Detroit's young men. But I'd love to kind of ask, like from your experience of being in the program, of running the program, what have you found to be an important aspect of the program?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I think the three sites that we work with kind of as you're saying, are, first of all, so cool all three of them. I do site visits and get to spend some time talking with supervisors and um making sure our tutors are are in the best place they can be, both for our tutors and for their students and um they're just such awesome people to get to work with um and I appreciate that they. They open up some different parts of Detroit and of educational access and educational justice to our students. They serve very different populations so, like you said, loyola High School is an all-boys high school. It was founded in the 90s to combat chronic absenteeism, specifically in young black men in the city of Detroit, which is part of the reason they're our original site partner. They're a Jesuit school, so we're closely tied with them and care a lot about absenteeism in Detroit is a huge thing, and having tutors that can be a connection to college and help people with access to higher ed is huge for our tutors that work there.
Speaker 3:La Casa came next started as a literacy center in southwest Detroit and then they had a tutor daycare option for students whose parents were in ESL classes and from there that became its own tutoring program and we've been with them for a couple of years now and, uh, they're a joy. It's like k through eighth grade um, mostly, uh, english second language students or students who have grown up in a spanish bilingual environment. Um, they're super cool and la casa is a great organization and we love working with them. And then brilliant is new to us this year but has been just so cool to get to know um. And a big thing for both La Casa and Brilliant is literacy. Um literacy rates in Detroit are um really low. Um, they're low broadly across the United States, but they are specifically very low in Detroit.
Speaker 3:Um, and so both Brilliant Detroit and La Casa have made their mission out of helping kids learn how to read. Brilliant, specifically, has the mission of trying to get students reading by kindergarten and reading at grade level by the third grade, so they target really that really young demographic. And then they also do I'm going to let you talk about the cool stuff they do but they do so much cool stuff and they're very like community driven, community focused um staffed by the communities that they're in um they run the sort of programming that the community that they're in wants them to run. So I yeah, I think the coolest part to me is just getting to work with these organizations like and also getting to work with our students and introduce our students to these organizations. But man, are they so cool and they're so cool to get to know.
Speaker 2:So for me, I tutor at the Brilliant Detroit, a New Martin Park location, and the days that I go it's once a week and we do book club, which ties into what Becky was saying about literacy and teaching kids how to read at kindergarten and then by grade level at third grade, so some other things that they do have there. This semester they have a martial arts day, so they have a martial arts instructor come in and teach the kids, um, I'm not sure if it's karate or whatever they do with martial arts, but they do do that. And then, when it was first semester, they had a kind of um sort of like a biology or like a stem program for the kids. So then they grew plants hydroponically or is it hydroponic, hydroponically? And then they grew some. What is itically, or is it hydroponically, hydroponically? And then they grew some. What is it? It's like Swiss chard, but like it's the red, reddish, purple one. I don't know what that's called. Oh, I don't know.
Speaker 3:Some type of Swiss chard. I've seen that, yeah, they have some sort of leafy green that they're growing.
Speaker 2:They're growing leafy greens yeah, yeah, with just water. Love it. Yeah, and it was very cool to see. And then every week when I'd go in and check it out for a semester, it would always have new growth and the kids would be so excited to talk about it. And they had. It was Dr Nayutu from the university who went there and helped the kids set it up and do it with them.
Speaker 1:That's awesome, See. This is why I love doing this podcast.
Speaker 1:It's like I work in the office that runs this program and yet, because there's just so much that we're doing in our different sectors, you don't necessarily always get to have like a full picture of what really goes on in some of the other programs if they're not the programs you actively work on, and so that's like super cool, like I didn't know. I know Brilliant Detroit was, or Brilliant Cities is now one of our newer partners and it's just cool to hear, like what different organizations in the city are doing to help combat literacy rates, to help engage students across, you know, our city and giving them access to greater education support in different ways. So that's super cool. Christine, I know you mentioned that you originally joined the program as a requirement for a course, but then you decided to join again for this semester, even though you don't have a course that requires it. Can you just talk a little bit about your experience of starting this because of a course and then your choice to continue on?
Speaker 2:Yeah. So when our professor said you guys can either have graded by just tests and assignments or you can also do the CEL, which is community engaged learning, as a grading scheme, and so I chose the CEL version because I thought maybe it would give me an extra points boost in my grade or something like that to help out.
Speaker 2:So, um, I got in contact with Becky and then we set up where I'd be going, what day and what time is usually an hour per week, like once a day for an hour. And then, once I started going the first day I went. I loved the ladies that run the hub they were very sweet, nice and kind and then also the students there. I thought I'd be scared around other kids that I'm not familiar with because I'd be a little bit nervous, but no, they made me feel very welcomed and they also love to talk about anything and everything, but they also do love to engage in what we're doing that day that's great.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, I. It's bringing me back to my one of my own experiences. I did a post-grad volunteer program after college, very similar to what Becky's currently doing. It's a different program. I wasn't with the Jesuit Volunteer Corps and I worked in refugee resettlement and a lot of my year was like casework and very administrative heavy, but also getting to interact with my clients was great. But when summer came around, we run an all-day camp program for a lot of the kids that are coming from. It's open to anyone in the area at the school that we operate at, but the majority of the students that go to this particular elementary school are coming from refugee families and it was just like such a fun program.
Speaker 1:One love being a camp counselor. Two, it was so joy-filled to just like be with kids Because so much of my work was working with adults, which is adults are awesome too, but the energy and the joy and the freedom that children bring is just like so fun and so engaging in a small act of like helping them learn how to read, or like I had to teach math class one day. That was terrifying. I'm not very good at math but even though it was like first grade math, I was still like what if I teach it wrong? And then you know, there's fun act for school activities too.
Speaker 1:It wasn't just academic learning, it was also art programs and things like martial arts or soccer, different things that our students liked. And so it's just bringing me all back to that moment, too, of like the gift of of being with kids is is also a joy, especially when we're surrounded in like very heavy academic areas and in college. Um, it's nice to to kind of relive some of those joyful moments of like elementary school and middle school and stuff for sure. Are there any particular stories, christina, that you could share about some of your tutoring experiences, whether it's particular students or if it's different experiences? You've had Any stories that you can share about your experience of being a tutor, any fun experiences that you've had throughout the program.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so the kids come after school to our tutoring program for about an hour or two, depending on whenever their parents or family member comes and picks them up. My favorite time was about two or three weeks ago. The kids came back from school we're very, very tired I don't know if they had a long day or just something happened at school and then one of the ladies at the hub suggested we do a like dance break moment.
Speaker 2:So we spent like 20 minutes just playing music that the kids recommended and we were just jamming out in the living room area, so we were just jamming out having fun, and then, once they got all the wiggles out, we got to sit down and actually start reading the book that they had to read that day, which was actually a really great experience for me too that's fun.
Speaker 1:What were some of the songs that they picked to play? I'm very curious. What are the? What are the young people wanting to play?
Speaker 2:it's not anything I've heard before it was kind of I don't know if you guys have heard the term brain rot, yeah, or something. It was like music like that was very upbeat, funky music and also really weird lyrics. Like not anything bad, of course, but it was just like things that you wouldn't really hear on the radio or just play by yourself. It was things that they made me see on, like youtube shorts or something like that.
Speaker 1:That's so funny, yeah, I love that I was trying to think of, like what were my kids?
Speaker 3:I was gonna say kids, what is the? Kids bop of today.
Speaker 1:I guess it's youtube shorts that's so funny yeah, that's great. Um becky, even though you are the person who coordinates the program, I know that you, as you said, you get to have site visits. Have there been any particular moments or highlights for you in some of those visits?
Speaker 3:At Loyola High School they do Mission Thursdays oh, I hope I have the right day of the week Before the school day. They have tours and they bring people in to learn about the school. A lot of Loyola's budget comes from donations, so this is one way that people are able to like experience the school. A lot of Loyola's budget comes from donations, so this is one way that people are able to like experience the mission of the high school. And so I was able to go at the beginning of this semester with Sammy, who works in our office and is my supervisor in this program, and then one of our professors who sends a lot of students our way through CEL to be a part of this program, and so we went to Loyola early in the morning. Andel to be a part of this program, and so we went to Loyola early in the morning and got to be a part of their morning prayer and get a tour of the campus and hear from some current students about how they ended up at Loyola and what they like about Loyola.
Speaker 3:And, as their principal, chris, likes to tell us, they don't prep the students for this at all, so it's always kind of a bit of a crap shot of what they're actually going to say but it was so great to actually hear from students about their experience and what they like about going there and get to explore campus and see their classrooms and their labs and the places our tutors actually work and are. Just so special to get to be kind of behind the scenes like that at a site we've been at for so long. And then kind of behind the scenes like that at a site we've been at for so long and then, yeah, I mean truly just like walking into brilliant and getting like run over by a bunch of kids. Just they're so absolutely adorable.
Speaker 3:And visiting martin park has been very fun. They were doing improv classes. The first time I was there I had a visit and got to walk in and have whoever was leading the improv classes just go freeze and watch a bunch of seven-year-olds just like hit the deck, just so funny I love that.
Speaker 1:Oh so fun. Yep, it's bringing me back to the camp counselor days, for sure. Another aspect of the program becky that you shared about is that not only is this a program connected to cel and connected to our students learning experience both in the academic realm and then, obviously, in engaging in the community. Another big piece of the program that we highlight that maybe isn't a part of all other CEL programs on our campus is this aspect of reflection. Yes, and so I'd love to hear from you, both as someone who facilitates the reflection and as someone who does some of the reflecting how have those reflection meetings kind of contributed to your experience as a tutor and as a person who's you know, running a program for our students?
Speaker 3:I can give you a little background on why and how we do those. Let's do it. It is something that I have to explain at orientation every semester of being like. So I know you're here to get your hours. This program is broader than that and I've tried to express to our tutors why I find that so valuable.
Speaker 3:I think it's really important for us to go into everything we do with background thinking. We don't act without reflection and we don't reflect without action, and part of that is this like educational component to this program for ourselves. So I have these two reflections a semester and orientation, which has a lot of kind of foundational reflecting work. We talk about the mission of the university, we talk about the mission of the program, we talk about how to tutor, we talk about our different sites, why we picked them all of kind of a lot of things we've addressed right now. But when we go into these reflections, I try to have one that talks about Detroit and one that talks about the nation at large and to talk about different systemic issues affecting educational access, educational justice within our country and our city. I think it's really important to lay the foundations of some of these things as we go into schools, especially. You know you're going to a school like Loyola that was founded to combat chronic absenteeism.
Speaker 3:Let's talk about 30 years later. What does chronic absenteeism look like in Detroit? Well, about 47% of Detroit students are chronically absent, which means they miss more than 10% of the days of the school year, miss more than 10% of the days of the school year. Wayne State just did a massive study on factors that lead to chronic absenteeism and why it's not just people not caring about their education. These are systemic issues of transportation and safety and poverty and racism, histories of segregation within Detroit To be able to talk about.
Speaker 3:Why are literacy rates so low in Detroit? Are they uniquely low in Detroit? Are they uniquely low in Detroit? Are they just kind of generically low in the US? Both of those things are true, but, like you know to be able to talk about that as a group and then to be able to say, okay, what does our own education look like? Does it look like the students we're interacting with? Does it look different than that? I know for me, my own background is in private education. I know for me, my own background is in private education. So how is that different than our students that we're working with, who have gone through public school systems, especially urban public school systems and especially Detroit's public school system.
Speaker 3:What do we want for our students? What can we dream up for them? Something I've worked really hard on the last couple of reflections is can we take this to action, because we don't reflect without action. So what can we look at? What policy changes could we envision? What practical changes could we envision?
Speaker 3:What is this impractical dream that we can have for the students of Detroit and for this next generation of American students, and what do we want for them? And what is the point of good education and to be able to engage in all of that, I think, really adds to the I hope really adds to the experience of working as a tutor. And to answer the question that I've gotten a couple times from tutors of why am I doing this for my chemistry class, uh, no, you know what. You probably don't need to know how to tutor to be a chemist, but you should probably think about education if you're working in an academic discipline I'm speaking as someone with a chemistry degree it's helpful to think about your community.
Speaker 3:It's helpful to think about education. It's helpful to think about your community. It's helpful to think about education, it's helpful to have experience reflecting and interacting with broader systems of inequity. So I hope to help lay foundations for our students in these reflections of like, yeah, specific knowledge about educational injustice, but also like a practice of reflecting and a practice of education and a practice of praxis, I guess.
Speaker 1:Thank you. That was so full and very well encompassed. I feel like now we have a very clear picture of what happens in the reflection meetings. Christina, from your perspective as a student, as someone who's engaging in the content, engaging in the community, what has it meant for you to be able to have that time to do that reflection and have that space for education as well?
Speaker 2:so before, when I didn't know what these reflections were, I didn't really know what I was going into like with the orientation Becky did describe, like what's going to happen, how you're supposed to tutor and everything, like she stated. So, attending the first reflection, we talked about education. Was it in Detroit or kind of a semester. Micro. More on a micro level.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I think we started. Yeah, we started with Detroit last semester.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we started on a really micro level just in Detroit, talking about yeah, what was the?
Speaker 3:first reflection last year it was just about educational inequality in Detroit. It was a bunch of statistics.
Speaker 2:So the most recent reflection we had, we talked about chronic absenteeism, like Becky stated, and it's a really big eye-opener because for me I never went to a private school.
Speaker 2:I did go to a public school but they were very hard on us about attending classes and being on your education because it's important for you when you get older if you want to be something important in the future.
Speaker 2:I know I want to be a dentist and I want to make my family happy.
Speaker 2:So hearing the differences between the way I had education versus students in Detroit it kind of makes me want to do better for the community I go to school in and especially for the little kids that I tutor.
Speaker 2:It makes me want to be a good role model for them and show them that, yes, school is hard and it's going to be hard basically all your life, but you can make it fun in certain ways, like if you read, give yourself a reward, like something to do after you read a chapter or two, or the dance breaks that we had at the hub, yeah. So it's just a very big eye opener. But even if you don't go to the reflections, just probably looking up, like the Wayne State study, it's a big issue that's going on in Detroit and when we were at the reflection we were talking about, even if it's impractical, what things can you come up with to fix? It could be um transit or it could be crime rates in Detroit, like what can we do to fix that? And I know we talked about there was like a little train that comes in every like 45 seconds, something like that, and it blips through the city.
Speaker 3:Yeah, uh, back in like the 50s I think, there was an electric streetcar on woodward that ran all the way downtown like up through ferndale and beyond, and at peak hours it would run like once a minute. And my point was like that's unfathomable in detroit today, but it existed once upon a time, so what can we imagine that could exist in the future?
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, so we did talk about that. And then we talked about how can we implement safe like if the students don't have a car or if their parents can't get them to and from school, how can we help them have a safer walk to school or walk back home? So it's just a lot of eye-opening conversations that we have that maybe you don't think about on a day-to-day basis, especially if you're a person that just really can do whatever they want, like you have your own car, you have a good education. It's really different just to see somebody your age in school versus somebody your age not in school, whether they have family obligations or work obligations that they just have to provide for so it's just a really big eye opener yeah.
Speaker 1:Great. No, I really appreciate you both sharing about the process of reflection. I know typically in university ministry we're very big on reflection. I don't know, it might have something to do with our mission, our identity.
Speaker 3:Gotta reflect on the reflections.
Speaker 1:Gotta reflect on the reflections evaluate it all, and I appreciate Becky mentioning that like we don't just sit in reflection but I often think of. Like our mission as a Jesuit and mercy institution is to be in and amongst the people and other religious orders, other groups of people. They're meant to be in spaces of deep prayer and reflection and kind of removed from the world, and not that that's not a beautiful vocation in and of itself, but that's not what we're called to do. So our reflection is also meant to help us, orient us towards action. What is the aspect of advocacy that we could do as a part of trying to combat some of the systemic issues that happen in Detroit around education, equality and equity? What are some of the things that we can do as students to make a small difference? You know we're not going to, maybe, in the span of our you know one hour conversation and reflection, come up with all of the solutions to solve why there's chronic absenteeism, why there's all these different issues of why students can't get to school for any number of reasons transportation, poverty. But I think there is a really big piece of importance that crosses beyond service in the city and is really true to who we are as Detroit Mercy is like knowing the context of a situation and just like the power that is knowledge, having the knowledge and knowing that we have to engage with it.
Speaker 1:Knowing that I can't look at the students I tutor every week I'm not tutoring, but I wouldn't be able to do that to look at my students every week and not think about what are the larger things going on in their life, and I might not be able to change that drastically. But I can make a difference by showing up every week. I can make a difference by being someone who's consistent, a difference by being someone who's consistent. And I can show up by trying to talk about policy, invite my friends into the program, invite people into conversation, even if they're not going to participate in the program, to spread that awareness in some way, shape or form. And so I appreciate both of you sharing and kind of giving me a better picture, even of a program that runs out of our office and also just highlights some really cool work that we're about and trying to do.
Speaker 1:So thank you both for that. As we kind of move into our questions around mission, I did have one question, which is how do you see the mission of Detroit Mercy and you can interpret mission as how do you see the mission of Detroit Mercy and you can interpret mission as you know, as a Catholic Jesuit mercy institution, we have a set of values that we care about. We have a spirit that is our identity. How do we see that aligning with our commitment to serving in the city of Detroit? Who would like to share first? How do you see those two connecting?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I can go first as a student here. The missions of Detroit Mercy there's many ways to interpret them, but for me I know our school really loves to give back to the community and loves to be around other people and help them, and with these programs that's what we do initially. As student tutors, we go and help these students that are less fortunate or need the education and we sit there. Even if we just offer them just a good time to like sit back and have some relaxation, even if it's just for an hour, it does make a difference. Like when the kids don't see me for a week, for example, I have something big going on that week. I can't go tutor. They're always like where's Ms Christina? When is she coming back? So we do make a big difference. Even if it's something small, they do see us as somebody that they can come to.
Speaker 3:So I think that does align with Detroit, mercy's missions and the missions and commitments to this program. Becky, what about for you? One of my favorite exercises that we do during orientation that I'm sure nobody enjoys as much as I enjoy, is I put up all of the Jesuit universal apostolic preferences and all of the mercy critical concerns and I say, okay, how do these relate to running a tutoring program? And I love it because there's some really obvious ones. Journeying with the youth great. There's one about education great. But I love it when people get a little bit more creative with their answer and we talk about care for our common home and how education is care for our common home and how Detroit is our common home and can we care for Detroit through education.
Speaker 3:Or one of the mercy critical concerns has to do with taking care of women. How do we make sure that women have space in education, being anti-racist, how do we address, like, racial divides and academic access? How do we talk about? Immigration is a huge one, especially with the Casa Guadalupana and English literacy. So it's one of my favorite exercises because I love having everybody give me the obvious answers and then going OK, another answer please. And watching everybody go oh no, and I'm like there's, but there's this like beautiful way that, like all of these things, education is such a broad issue and it tackles a lot of other issues and so for me, like that's where I see the mission involved is that every little piece of it finds its home in education.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I like. What you said about. It made me chuckle about asking them to go deeper with it and be like think a little bit more. I do spiritual direction with a number of people on campus and, as their director, sometimes my job is to kind of probe people to share more. So instead of asking direct questions, there's a tactic. It's part of the learning of just saying tell me more about that. Part of the learning of just saying tell me more about that.
Speaker 1:And then it's very funny when they're like a student or a faculty member has said like I don't know if there's more, and then you just sit in silence and just see what happens. And then most of the time people aren't super comfortable with silence so they'll fill it with an answer of some kind. But a lot of the time that outward processing gives really really cool answers that I wasn't thinking of, that they maybe hadn't thought of before. So I like that tactic. Definitely do that a lot. Anything else that either of you want to share about your experiences with service in the city Our students?
Speaker 3:rock. I talked a lot about the people we work with and not about the students that I get to work with. Our students rock. This is the most connection I get to have with our students because it's a big program and that's a great joy for me too is getting to know students over the course of multiple semesters sometimes and hearing their insights into things and seeing them get really excited about their sites and their students and, yeah, they're super cool.
Speaker 2:I just think it's a great experience, even if you're not involved in tutoring or service in the city and your professor doesn't require it. I think everyone should try to look into it, Maybe even if it's just for volunteer hours or something, but it makes you feel like a better person because you're helping these people. So that's why I really love doing it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, great. You mentioned something that I should have asked that this is one of the programs where you get to interact with a lot of our students. It is. I didn't ask how big is our service in the city program generally?
Speaker 3:I think I've got about 40 tutors this semester, so I sit between 30 and 40 tutors a semester. Hey, would love to see that number go up.
Speaker 1:listeners, everyone, get more involved. Let's make it 50.
Speaker 3:Everyone get more involved. Let's make it 50. The wonderful thing about brilliant detroit is they have a ton of hubs throughout detroit, so if I fill the hubs that I have, hey, I can send you to a different hub. There is infinite growth well, not infinite, but there's near infinite growth potential. Uh for uh, brilliant detroit tutors.
Speaker 1:So just saying love it, love it, no, that's great.
Speaker 1:So now we're going to move into the two questions I ask every guest on the podcast related to our mission, and they are written out as very simple, very vague questions, because it's important to me, and I think it's important to us for the podcast, to hear how people interpret the language of mission at our school, because not everyone's going to be able to go to mission training and formation that some of our staff and faculty can go to.
Speaker 1:Students might not have the opportunity to engage in some of the programming where we use more mission language. So those two questions are what is your favorite part of the mission and what motivates you to live out the mission? And so, however, you interpret our mission, uh, from your experience of the spirit of our school, um, the spirit of the institution, uh, informed by our jesuit mercy charisms, as a catholic institution. What do you identify as your favorite part of the mission? And so, becky, this will be your second time answering this question and I don't remember institution. What do you identify as your favorite part of the mission? And so, becky, this will be your second time answering this question and I don't remember what you said the first time.
Speaker 3:I don't either. I was trying to remember so I could give a different answer.
Speaker 1:Well, whatever comes up, let you think about it. Christina, why don't you go first and share what's your favorite part of the mission of Detroit, mercy?
Speaker 2:My favorite part of the mission is being very driven to help anyone or anything, whether it's on campus, out of campus, and that does align with my values as a Christian. We do love to help people in our community and outside of our community, so I think that is also adding onto the second question. That is what motivates me to live the mission, because I'm like you could call me, a people pleaser. I really love to help people and make sure everyone's happy with me, like to the extent of how much I can do so being part of CEL or anything that goes with school or outside of school. I love to do it, whether it's at church or at my little sister's school, helping out when they need help, like it's anything. And that's what I think is my favorite part of the mission and it's what motivates me to live it.
Speaker 1:Great Thanks, becky. What about yourself? Favorite part, what motivates you?
Speaker 3:I'm kind of in the headspace of more of our service and community engagement right now, because that's what we've been talking about, and I think one of the things I love in that regard is how it's a culture of community engagement and service. It's not just our office over here doing service work. There are almost too many of us who are in charge of community engagement. That's a good thing. You know, there's so many people at this university who care so much about integrating that into our life of academics, life of our institution and the life of our university. I think that's really awesome. It's a joy to be a part of a place that takes that so seriously. I think what motivates me to live that mission yeah, for me it is. Also. It's a faith-based thing and for me it comes from being Jesuit educated and I've loved getting to know the Marcy sisters as well, but I went to a Jesuit college and that idea of contemplatives and action and being people in the world is something that I have taken with me strongly continue to take with me.
Speaker 1:We are now moving into one of my favorite parts of our podcast, which is our lightning round. The way this works is I'm basically going to rapid fire ask you questions and I'll have one of you answer first, the other person answer second and you'll always be the one who answers first, or always second. That way we can just fly through these and then the last question is always the one that usually offers a bit more of a story. So don't feel like you have to go too fast, but generally it's the first thing that comes to mind, first thing that you've thought of. That answers this question and it really just gives our listeners really an opportunity to hear something fun and a little more casual about you and get to know you as individuals, especially because a lot of the time the content on our podcast is, you know, very. It can be very deep, but it takes us into a realm of just kind of being a little fun and silly. So that's what we're going to do.
Speaker 1:Who is feeling called to go first? Perfect, christina is going to go first. So I will start and ask you sweet or salty, salty, salty? What is your favorite color? Pink, pink, sage, green? What is one of your favorite things about Detroit?
Speaker 2:Probably downtown Detroit with the liveliness detroit city football club oh, love it. Current favorite song mine is bluest flame by selena gomez.
Speaker 1:Okay, little light by semler oh see it, I love that question because I always get to add to my playlists uh, water, earth fire or air fire fire. Oh, I love it. Uh, name someone who inspires you and why?
Speaker 2:uh, the person that inspires me the most is my dad. Um, we as a family, we weren't born here, we were born in iraq. So he took the initiative to move us to the united states so his kids can have a better education, and that's what I strive for.
Speaker 3:Amazing, my college spiritual director, gretchen Olson. She's just the coolest and does ministry how I want to do ministry.
Speaker 1:Love it, one place you want to visit.
Speaker 2:I want to visit. It's in Michigan. It's called Kitchi. Kitchi to Kippy.
Speaker 1:Yes, that's exactly where I went there this past summer. Yeah, I want to go this summer, super cool vienna oh, another great place I want the billy joel tattoo what is a word that you have a hard time pronouncing or that you like trip up on?
Speaker 3:absenteeism good example uh, I had a speech impediment as a kid, so the Byron line which waves in every raven dress is brutal.
Speaker 1:Oh gosh, I love it. Morning person or a night owl, night owl, yes, and I like it. And then, what's the best advice you've ever received?
Speaker 2:The best advice I've ever received. I used to work for a really old doctor. He's a general dentist but he does a lot of cosmetic work. So when I would talk to him about school and how I was so stressed that was my first year of college, he would always tell me to keep pushing, regardless of if I God forbid fail the DAT or fail a class. It's not a big deal. It'll feel like a big deal in that moment, but you can always bounce back and be better than what you used to be.
Speaker 3:I love it becky discernment is not about the right destination, it's about the next right step and that, even if you walk five miles in the what you think is the wrong direction and you have to turn around and walk back to the start, it's not that you've moved to zero miles, it's that you've moved 10 love that, love that, amazing.
Speaker 1:Well, I just want to say thank you both so much for being on our podcast, for sharing about the Service in the City program. I feel like I learned so much more. I also just love hearing the stories about interactions with some of the community members that we engage with through the program, hearing more about what our reflection and advocacy process looks like. I just really appreciate you both being here, taking the time and just enjoying the conversation today. I mean, it's just been a delight and I'm really hopeful that those listening feel like they learned something new and maybe you'd think about, in the fall, signing up for a service in the city. We try and get those signups in pretty early the signups are really early in the beginning of the semester.
Speaker 3:Please get to me quickly.
Speaker 1:Well, not me, it'll be a new JV, but get to the new JV quickly, yes, so if you're interested, even if you are feeling interested right now, you can always come by our office and we can make sure to get you the information as soon as it's available come the fall. Usually we have it ready right in August. So be ready that first week of classes, if you are interested, and for all of our tutors who are listening, who are currently tutoring, I hope you continue on. I hope you're like Christina and say I want to keep doing this because this is great. We love you. Thank you, yeah, and thank you for engaging in our community and building relationship with the city and the people who live here and engage in our community in a meaningful and purposeful way. Great, so thank you both. Thank you, so I had a really great time in my conversation today with Christina and Becky. As I said in the middle of the podcast, it's really a joy for me to be able to sit down and talk with current students who are engaged in different programming. I feel like I just learned so much more. As I said, you know, this is a program that we run out of university ministry, so I've been aware of our tutoring program for service in the city, but I really don't know all that goes into it because it's not a part of my primary role and so I don't know all the background work that Becky was putting in. I know a lot of the spreadsheets and the coordinating part because I hear about that, but I didn't get to hear as much about what we're doing in terms of educating our students about education access and even learning more about our different sites of Loyola High School and La Casa Guadalupana, and then hearing about Brilliant Detroit, brilliant Cities as a new partner. It's just really a joy to get to hear from students about what they're engaging in, hear from my own co-worker about how this has been a part of their work for this year. It's just really a joy and I think I'm really grateful for the opportunity to sit with people and to hear them unpack things, to learn about chronic absenteeism I knew that was a part of why Loyola High School was created but to hear a little bit more about the fullness of that and to know what still is happening 30 years later after the school has been opened. What does it look like and how are we operating as an institution? How are we contributing to them thriving? How are we engaging in our city and trying to talk about education access. It's just really an interesting topic that I didn't know a lot about, and so I'm grateful to have heard about this process, about service in the city, and I'm hopeful that you listening, were also engaged and learned something new, whether it was about service in the city as a program or about the city of Detroit and what education access looks like.
Speaker 1:You've been listening to what's the Tea with Ministry. If you enjoyed listening to us today, be sure to subscribe so you never miss an episode. Also, be sure to follow us on social media at udm underscore or check us out on the what's the Tea with Ministry podcast at the Detroit Mercy website. Thank you to our guests, christina and Becky, for being in conversation with us today. Thank you also to all those who've made this podcast possible, especially the Communication Studies Department, our sound engineer, michael Jason, our music composer, dan Gregg, marketing and communications and the whole Detroit Mercy community. We look forward to sharing more of the mission with you next time. See you later.