... so a new start as our old community secondary school closed on New Year's Eve and the new CE secondary school opened. It had been a long time coming and I am really excited to be working on the Christian Distinctiveness aspect of our school and overseeing our new RE faculty. I am truly excited by the developments at the school and, by the very nature that it has taken me 2 months to be able to write anything, I think that speaks volumes. I have a new-found love of my job and my work. I am truly loving working at developing the worship programme and resources in school and helping to develop each child spiritually.
Our staff are fabulous and have really responded to everything that has been asked of them and our team is superb. People have shared ideas about what went well and how we can improve the experiences of worship time for our children. I have loved being able to talk to people about what the children would enjoy or may like to experience. It has been challenging so far, and I know it won't get easier, but I can't believe how far we have already come along our immense journey.
Today I spoke to the fabulous people at Open Doors and we talked about ways that we can encourage our students to think and to pray about the persecuted Church and to use this as a way to learn about other countries and to compare the lifestyles in different nations and within different nations - a really fabulous way to offer students the opportunity to empathise with others, to consider the sense of morality about the persecuted church, tolerance, understanding and the need for peace across the globe. Children have been, through Lent, exploring one of the world watch list countries each week - I am going to explore next year building it into our PSHE/SMSC/Citizenship 'collapsed timetable days' in order to explore much broader issues.
I'm currently looking into creating a prayer space in school - it's not easy given the cramped space that we have, but it will be 'doable' I have no doubt.
