Harmony Project — School Visit

Visit by John Martin and Penny Mawdsley to Boughton Heath C.P. School, Chester, during Interfaith Week, November 2009, on behalf of Chester Humanist Group

The visit was the second one we made to the school (the first took place in early November 2008)  as part of the Chester Interfaith Group’s “Harmony Project”, an initiative set up a couple of years earlier to contribute towards community cohesion across the city.  The first such school visit locally – to a primary school in Blacon – took place following an attack on a mosque in the area.

John and Penny ‘team taught’ to introduce Humanism to 3 classes each of 30 children in Years 4, 5, 6 (7-8 yr olds, 8-9 yr olds, 9 -10 yr olds respectively).  We had one classroom session with each of the age groups and – in addition to what we did last year – we took part in a joint Assembly with the other participants on the final day.  We upgraded the material we used last year but continued to use the now ‘retro’ format of a prepared flip-chart rather than moving to a power-point presentation.  In addition to the lively discussion session we had with the 3 age groups we left each class with copies of a ‘wordsearch’ quiz we had devised by way of providing the regular class teachers with a means of recap following our departure.

As part of our preparation we had fully studied the (high quality) educational material then available via the BHA website but decided against using it because it had been devised for use over a course of several lessons and used a thematic approach which was designed to slot in neatly with the regular RE curriculum  under “Celebrations”.  Ours was a one-off visit and we felt unable to customise this official material to suit our needs.

Even then we found ourselves rushing to get through the material that we had prepared in the time allowed – and overshooting.  In all three classes we could have done with a double lesson slot to cover the material more comfortably.  The children were however very responsive and asked some good questions.  Perhaps we had been slicker in our delivery last time..?

The Assembly was the least satisfactory part of the experience for us.  We had produced the banner which contained the agreed* key words of the visiting group:  Respect, Equality, Acceptance and we had set up a small ‘exhibition’ table on which were displayed a children’s book on Human Rights, an Amnesty International candle and a number of leaflets and flyers – but  there wasn’t time to introduce the items and talk about them briefly as we’d hoped to have an opportunity to do.  In fact we felt that doing so wouldn’t fit comfortably into the traditional assembly pattern which had been devised by the other participants.  Their contributions of song, story, prayer and praise were unmistakably of the ‘worship’ mode. In short we felt mildly ridiculous sitting up at the front behind our table as if we were part of a silent witness rather than full participants!  N.B If there is a ‘next time’ there we would want to tell a short Humanist (or Philosophy-for-Children) story and to speak about our exhibits – possibly asking a child to light the candle.

*The other participants were Quaker Universalist, Anglican Franciscan, Ba’hai and Muslim – although the Muslim (parent) didn’t take part in the assembly – not exactly a fully representative group from the various faith communities to be found in and around Chester – to be fair, however, the Interfaith Group has been trying for a long time (a) to find representatives from other faiths to join the group and (b) to find people from the communities currently represented in the group free, able and willing to come into school.

Follow-up: There is supposed to be a ‘de-brief’ arranged sometime soon as well as a share-best-practice session for those who took part.  Two other schools, one primary and one secondary in the Chester area have expressed an interest in having a similar visit but no dates have yet been set.