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Dear God...
“The ocean is like God and raindrops are the religion. When they fall into the ocean they become one.”
Zoya Ahmed and Nurun Uddin

Barnet and Enfield Sacre:
Faith Ambassadors in Schools:
Encounters & Understandings

Our Progress:

Our progress March 2016

Barnet Project

We began by identifying the primary & secondary schools that would take part in the project.  At the beginning of the Autumn Term we met with Hendon School in Barnet & devised a plan to train their secondary students to go into their primary schools to talk about their religion. At the school the young people from Sunni Islam, Hinduism, Catholicism & Alevism volunteered to join the project. They were all year 8 students with one student from year 9. The Head of the RE Department Amy Murtaugh supported the young people in their research. They made their first presentations to their teacher & peers & they had tried to put into their work everything they knew about their religion. Ms Murtaugh then discussed the need for the presentations to be more child friendly so that there was less text, more visual material & a more interactive approach. I then went into see the next presentation & suggested some more changes. The students then went into their local primary school & made their presentations to a year 6 class. The parallel project in Enfield has linked Winchmore Secondary School with firs Farm & Highfield primary schools. The presentations cover: Islam; Christianity & Hinduism.
 
What we have learned:
  • Everything takes much longer than you imagine & you have to factor in illness & the pressure of everyday school life.
  • The reflective journals were difficult for the young people to keep as they needed more structure so a framework was created by Sabah Raza & shared (I’ve included this as a folder).
  • When the young people gave their presentations planning was key. Many schools do not allow memory sticks from outside their school to be used on their machines so presentations needed to be emailed to the primary school teacher well ahead of time. Each group also needed a fellow student to support them with their power-point presentation so that they could give their full attention to their presentation rather than have to concentrate on two things.
  • It was very important to have a series of mock presentations to peers, teachers & advisers so that it was possible to reflect on what had & had not worked & make the necessary changes to be more child friendly.
  • We are going to write up all the reflections & modify the pilot programme before it is rolled out to more schools.