School Days

I spent an intriguing and rewarding day at Ripley School today. It's an odd one. Literally a minute's walk from my house, i'd never seen it before because i've never walked for a minute in that direction down the road before turning off. There are sheep and other domestic animals in its grounds. Sheep. A minute's walk behind my house. And they "mehr" a lot. Never heard em before! Amazing. Ripley, from certain angles, looks like a miniature Hogwarts. The entrance hall is a scaled-down version, with a grand stone staircase and everything, which only the staff are allowed to use, by the way. I both ascended and decended that staircase today. Oh yes. It felt wonderful.

I was there assisting with Year 10's 'spirituality' PSHE day. I went with a team from the uni chaplaincy centre. We had half a form group for the whole day, and did various activities with them based around the theme of relationships - family, friends, partners, marriage and so on. It was a bit of a culture shock for me, really. I got over it pretty quickly, but at first i wasn't quite used to the politeness and good behaviour from the younguns. I guess it was partly because we weren't regular teachers, and they respond particularly well to uni students, but they actually listened and obeyed and were polite to the class teacher. And they were kind and helpful towards the pupil who had Down's Syndrome. And the 'cool' girls weren't unkind towards the less-cool girls. And the boys were nice to everyone. What was going on??

Others in the team talked about how these young people were 'difficult' in the morning, only properly opening up later on. But to me they were positively 'easy', comparing them to some young people from my (perhaps limited) experience. I felt the activities we did with them were good and i think they benefitted from it, but we really didn't capitalise on the receptivity of the pupils. There was the potential to do so much more and go so much deeper with them...and that's something for the team to learn for next time. This school is actually currently looking for a full-time youth-chaplain-type-person...but the pull toward Luton is so strong...