Taking a breath

Sorry things have been quiet on here for a while. I’m hoping that will change over the next few months, and come September there will be frequent updates, current articles and thinking as well as lots of exciting new features on the site. Anyway, more on that later. For now, just let me tell you a bit about the week I was running in school last week…

This is Breathe, a fantastic resource for schools developed by Jenny Baker about 4 years ago. I have used it each year since then in at least one school I visit, but this year, I was asked to lead a whole week of activities for year 9s, and asked to fill a 2-3 hour slot each morning and afternoon. I told them about Breathe and they absolutely loved the idea. My next challenge was, Breathe only lasts an hour with class groups…hmmm, how to fill the rest of the time!?

Firstly, if you don’t know anything about Breathe, it’s basically an opportunity for students to explore faith,  by listening to how Christians try to answer some of the big questions in life, and then inviting them for their own response. They look at ideas about themselves, other people, the world around them and God. They each receive an ipod and get to move round a huge colourful mat with different activities to do at each station (with instructions from the voice of their guide). For more information do follow the link at the end of this post.

Funniest moment in the week: In reply to the question ‘Where is God?’, one young person left this response on a post it note: “He must be in my bathroom, cos every morning my dad shouts “God, are you STILL in there???!!!”

Most moving moment in the week: A challenging group of year 9s came to take part in one of my sessions, and I was silently dreading it. They came in obviously looking for a fight…I was really tired by that point and didn’t have the energy to run round after them picking up wreckage etc. But, I sat with them and explained one of the stations, then sent them off to do different ones on their own, and for the rest of the time I barely noticed them! At the break time I heard one of them saying to another “that was alright wan it? was really relaxin”....I do believe in miracles!

Most challenging moment in the week: This question came from one boy - “If God is a forgiving God, why is there hell?” It led to a great conversation…

Most unexpected moment: A lad who seemed really quite disinterested in the whole experience and was just sat by the side of the mat, had even given the ipod in claiming he couldn’t be bothered. We started chatting and it turned out he was put off by the idea of using a plasma ball on station 12 to represent prayer, saying that you can’t pretend God is in a toy. I asked him what he thought God was like, and after quite a long time, he said to me ‘he’s like light’. We talked about how the use of light in the plasma ball was in fact symbolising God’s light, God’s spirit, and he spent probably at least the next 10 or 15 minutes fascinated by this plasma ball!  He took back his ipod and listened to the meditation which talks about connecting with the unseen…for Christians that is connecting with God in prayer, and the symbol of the light moving according to your touch on the globe is an effective way of picturing that.

Breathe is an incredibly creative resource for tapping into expressing spiritual questions and insights. Some students needed more help than others in engaging with the activities, but considering they were year 9s*, I thought they did brilliantly, and I thoroughly enjoyed the week (even if I did need the whole weekend to sleep afterwards!!).

 

 

Oh, so how did I fill the remaining time??? Here’s a picture of what we were doing for the rest of the session:

 

They translated some of their thinking they were doing around the wheel, into plotting a map of their life’s journey and questions they had along the way. This activity was a spur of the moment idea as I was walking through St Pancras station the day before and decided to pick up 40 tube maps!! The activity evolved throughout the week, but ended up working quite well, with the students plotting their tube line on maps with others in their group and they had to talk about where their lines might cross over and at what points of their lives did they connect, and even what questions about faith they shared.

 

A really fun week, and a privilege to be able to run this resource in school. If you’d like more information, you can download a flyer from the dare2engage website here.

 

*Breathe was designed for use with 16-19 year olds. It has been used quite widely in other year groups, and has worked fairly well with various groups, but the recommendation is still that older young people will engage far better with this resource and get much more out of it. For some of the younger ones, it is a little too playful to be meaningful, and especially around year 9 many of them adopt a group mentality when taking part in the activity and struggle to enjoy the experience on their own.

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