‘But what can I do?’ part 2 – Practical Tips
Richard Coton, CVE Scotland Secretary and former Head Teacher, shares his experience
- Get people praying
In every school in which I served, I helped set up a Staff Prayer Meeting if there wasn’t one already. Even if there are just two Christians on the staff, get one going! Or if you are the only Christian on the staff, can you invite a couple of Christian parents into school to start praying? Whenever I could, I also contacted one or more local churches and ask them to pray for the school; I could always find at least one who would partner enthusiastically with us, and then I would feed them regular prayer requests, making sure all was to keep within an educational framework, rather than wrongly encouraging an idea that they were supporting backdoor evangelism. Pray for Schools Scotland is a fantastic network. (Interestingly, when I was appointed as head teacher, I soon realised that a group of Christian staff and parents had been praying for several years that God would send a Christian headteacher to the school!)
- Choose your classroom resources
As a young English teacher, I could select from an endless range of texts that would help my pupils think through ethical and spiritual issues. If you’re an English teacher, don’t miss the fantastic resources on the Cross Ref website. But every curriculum area (whether you teach early years, primary or secondary) has resources which will help your pupils to investigate a whole dimension beyond arid secularism. Simply visit the CVE Scotland Resource Centre and use the search engine.
- Outdoor Learning
Outdoor Learning is an entitlement for all pupils — it’s also great fun! So I frequently looked for opportunities to promote field trips to outdoor centres run by SU Scotland, Compass, Abernethy etc. Think of geography/environmental studies field trips, team building, primary secondary transition etc. https://www.cve-scotland.org.uk/teachers/get-support/classrooms-without-walls.html
- Community Partnerships
All schools must develop dynamic partnerships with the community. And finding sufficient numbers of effective, educational partnerships will probably be something your headteacher worries about: next time HMI visit, they’ll undoubtedly mark the school down if the partnerships are not there. Partnerships with both Christian charities and local churches can help a school enormously. I introduced Charities Weeks to most of the schools I taught at; they raised a lot of money and also helped children and young people (in the words of President Kennedy) to “Ask not what the world will do for you, but rather what you can do for the world.” Numerous speakers from Christian charities visited the schools as a result. There were exciting partnership projects (like the time we built a classroom in Tanzania with World Vision. And in one school, Signpost International (a Christian charity) took parties of senior pupils on overseas development trips. It’s an inspiring story: https://www.signpost-international.org/2018/01/23/monifieth-high-school/
The CVE Scotland website has loads of ideas for school community partnerships: https://www.cve-scotland.org.uk/teachers/case-studies/general.html
- Scripture Union Group
And of course, I spent many years helping to run a Scripture Union Group. The clue is to think big: your SU Group isn’t a ghetto for battered Christians. It’s an exciting place where pupils can explore and have lots of fun. We were attention-seeking, entrepreneurial and just a bit crazy. We were into charity fund raising for the whole school, high profile events, weekend residentials and some astonishing guest speakers. It’s amazing who will come if you ask them: though I think our all-time coup was Col Jim Erwin, one of the 10 human beings who have walked on the surface of the moon.
Read Part 1 of RIchard’s blog ‘But what can I do?’ here.
[All blogs on our website are the personal view of the writer and do not necessarily represent a position taken by CVE Scotland.]
