Any ideas for doing Alpha in school?
Categories: Secondary
The Youth Alpha manual has a ‘Lite’ version of the course, but does anyone have any suggestions on how to make it work? I’m not sure that the material will work very well with the group I’ve got in mind.
How have you done Alpha in school in the past?
One of the reasons why alpha works so well for adults is that it is based around food. The same seems to work for kids. So maybe lay on a light lunch for them?
I think that Youth for Christ have been working on a Youth Alpha for schools - not sure where its got to - but check out your local yfc
In Scotland, we (SU) are working in partnership with Alpha and YFC to provide training on doing Youth Alpha during lunchtime slots. We’ve been gathering feedback and helpful hints from a number of schools workers who’ve already been trying it.
The material YFC are working on is a teaching resource designed to fit in with the RE curriculum, so is quite different from running an optional Youth Alpha course during a lunchtime.
Feel free to email me if I can be any more help
Phil
Recently I have been helping sixth formers run YA in their school to yr 7’s to Yr 11’s at lunchtime. Having food is a great idea and helps as an attraction. Also maybe taking an assembly to promote it will help. When it comes to running the actual YA, I would say to try and make it a place where they are being prompted to ask questions and debate/talk through the questions posed by YA.
I have found with the one that I am helping with is that it is not interactive enough. For the next one that is run we are going to look at how we make it more participative for all.
Hope this helps somehow!