About a year ago I realised that my schools work was in trouble. Every assembly I was taking, every lesson I was teaching and every group session I was leading ended up with the same challenge. It was beginning to sound meaningless. The sentiment was open-ended and empty. What was the challenge? ‘Let’s make a difference’.
‘Making a difference’ is a great motivation, the reason we do what we do, but the problem for me was that it was incomplete. I was unsure what difference I wanted to see, or, through my work with the students, was asking them to make. Yet opportunities to help young people kept on coming.
I met Jenny* one cold Friday morning walking the corridors of the school while most other students were in their maths or double science lessons. She was clearly weighed down and burdened. We started to meet once a week for mentoring, yet even by the third or fourth session she would not utter more than ‘hello’ or shrug her shoulders, and would just sit huddled in her chair, arms folded, often with a scarf obscuring her mouth. One week I invited her to write her thoughts down on paper. She thought for a few minutes, stood up and just walked out of the room.
The following week Jenny was not in school, and I felt like I had failed and let her down. However, later on her Head of Year passed me a note from Jenny. Inside that envelope was a piece of paper overflowing with words that articulated beautifully a desperately difficult, broken and painful situation. It began to give me a fuller picture of this girl who had previously sat before me, not allowing a glimpse behind the wall she had built between us. Reading her letter, I knew that I had been a part of making a difference – in helping her to find the words she needed to begin to move on.
Schools work, in all its variety, is uniquely positioned to impact the lives of young people and make a real difference, more than just words and open-ended sentiment. Jenny is one of thousands of students who are starting to have their stories heard, and to move on, in school after school after school around the UK. Not only is it about meeting young people’s emotional needs, but also listening to their searching spiritual questions, connecting with their families, having input to their education, and speaking into the spiritual delivery that a school provides.
Are these not vital ways to see real, transformative difference? If we are not in that space are we missing out?
In this issue of Youthwork, we want to challenge the assumption that schools work is just about the R.E. lesson, the assembly or the lunchtime club. It is bigger and more diverse than that, and includes youth work from all kinds of traditions and backgrounds. In his article on page 8, Brad Hawkes claims that if we are working with young people then we all have a part to play in schools ministry – whether we have thought about it in that way before or not. I agree. We should be taking seriously the call to encourage our young people to live and work out their faith authentically in the place where they spend two thirds of their lives growing up.
So, what of the difference we aspire to make? Here’s my vision: I want to see fewer exclusions and a reduction in numbers of students turning to self harm; I want to see places for students to express their anger in helpful ways and spaces in school for sharing faith in ways that are meaningful and real; I want to see students restored to wholeness and teachers finding an environment to share safely and be supported; I want to see schools taking seriously the spiritual agenda; I want to see assemblies that change students’ minds about real issues. I want to see more things than I have space to write on this page and I want to see students living their lives to the full.
What do you want to see? Dream for a moment. Dare to be inspired by a specific, bold vision. In this issue we speak of a bigger vision, we allude to significant change on the horizon and at the same time it is often in the small details that we begin to see big vision and real difference become a reality. Where are you going to start?
Amy Stock, Project Director for Schoolswork.co.uk, is the guest Editor of this month’s Youthwork magazine
*Jenny’s name changed to protect her identity.
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