Schoolswork resurrected
This article was originally published in Youthwork magazine in 2007. It is reproduced here with permission.
In 2005 Youthwork published ‘The Death of Schools Work’, an article by Chris Curtis that asked whether Christian work in its current form could survive the fast-changing educational and cultural climate. Two years on, out of the experience of his work in Luton schools, Chris offers a vision for Christian schools work in the coming decade.
Silence.
Two hundred and thirty eight teenagers sitting in some kind of suspended animation in a large school hall. Teachers parade on the edges of this stillness, eyes bulging fiercely at anyone who so much as shuffles. Including me. That’s me there, standing slightly uncomfortably at the front, looking out across the hall. At the sullen lad in the second row who’s perfected disinterest through body language. And the two girls passing notes unnoticed behind him.
There’s a nod from the burly PE teacher who’s in charge of this lot, and I’m off. The next eight minutes of these teenagers’ lives belong to me. For anyone who’s stood where I am, comparisons with jumping out of a plane or feeding tigers, or being fed to them for that matter, seem entirely appropriate. This is schools work. And it’s about the most invigorating, faith-stretching thing you can do on a Monday morning if you want to connect with the 96% of young people who never darken the doors of your church.
Actually assemblies are only one piece of the jigsaw that makes up Christian schools work, and there are plenty of others. You can probably add RE and PHSE lessons to the list, clubs at lunchtime and mentoring. But then there’s a helping hand in sports or drama, therapeutic work in anger management, support for Christian pupils - and staff - not to mention ‘creative hanging around’, the phrase we coined for being out and about during breaks. Schools work across the country is as diverse and different as the schools themselves. What is cutting edge in inner city Sheffield might not cut the mustard in Norwich. Anyway, you probably already know that. A large percentage of church youth workers do some schools work and there are close to a thousand full time specialist schools workers too.
Schools work and youth work are like identical twins. People tend to assume they’re alike, and that if you can do one you can do the other, but actually they’re very different. Despite the skills needed to work in education, churches often expect youth workers to be able to operate seamlessly in both youth group and classroom. Amazingly, despite the plethora of professional qualifications for church youth workers, schools work doesn’t feature in pretty much any of the courses (something that’s slowly being put right now). Nobody trains you to take and assembly or teach a lesson. More importantly nobody gets you to think Schools work resurrected about what schools work ‘is’. Evangelism? That’s been the unspoken presumption from a lot of churches, even though you might not want to mention that to the local Head. Just building links and relationships? Certainly, but hopefully more than that too. The missiology and theology of schools work has always been thin on the ground, giving rise to an opportunistic approach that has sometimes lacked a clear rationale.
Whatever the answer, changes in education have forced our hand - a good thing, perhaps - and we have to think about all of this more seriously. Assemblies aren’t what they used to be. Back in my day they were daily, then weekly, and now, in some schools monthly. The smart money in education is on them disappearing altogether in the future. RE is still compulsory - except in private schools and the new academies - but it’s changing too. The school day is becoming more flexible and in some places lunchtimes are ‘rolling’ with some students eating while others are still in lessons. And whereas school staff comprised teachers, front office secretaries and those weird lab technicians in white coats, now there are almost as many nonteaching staff on site as there are teachers.
Two trends dominate the changes. On one side, the personalisation of the curriculum. Students in the same year group will increasingly have tailored timetables and be studying different subjects. Some as young as 13 or 14 will be disappearing to other schools and colleges for whole days to use specialist facilities in construction, catering or engineering (That’s why assemblies will become less practical). There’ll be new diplomas alongside GCSE’s and improved technology will make it easier to track pupils’ progress in key indicators. Religious Education will remain, but will be continually squeezed for space. Some schools are already fulfilling their legal obligations by holding RE days at the end of term, freeing the weekly timetable for other subjects.
The second trend is towards connection with the community. Schools are increasingly being seen as the centre of the community in the way churches were a century ago. As a result they will be open earlier and closed later. Extra money (not much, but it’s something) will be used to encourage schools to expand what they offer not just to pupils, but to their parents and other local people as well. The ‘extended schools’ programme will give opportunities for churches to connect with young people in some innovative new ways, if we’re prepared take up the challenge.
So now what we have done as ‘schools work’ for years seems like it’s in danger of disappearing, becoming increasingly inappropriate and impractical. But schools work isn’t dead, it’s being reborn and reimagined in this new educational world. And, as it happens, it may be the best thing to happen to us in years.
Luton is a good place to be when you’re trying to figure all this out. Twelve secondary schools, a sixth form and an FE college and huge cultural and religious diversity. If it works here, it’ll work almost anywhere. There are fifteen full time staff and eight part time volunteers at LCET, a Trust created by a partnership of local churches, working in most of these schools. We’re passionate about young people discovering and being transformed by the Christian faith, but what place does that agenda have in a modern secular educational environment?
The answer is not easy to work out. Our relationship with schools is layered and complex, not easily given to simple pronouncements about intent. Even the terminology is revealing: is it school ‘ministry’ or schools ‘work’? And what’s the aim? Conversion to the Christian faith? Surely it would be deeply dishonest not to admit that this is part of what we want, even if sometimes we’ve been inappropriate in the methods we’ve used.
Perhaps the issues we face simply mirror those of the wider church in understanding how to reach out to our community, where a challenge to personal conversion without reference to the wider needs of the community sounds increasingly empty. Schools workers also need to find a wider concept of mission, living with and serving a school community in a way that demonstrates the Kingdom of God with its personal call to faith but also its wider call to justice and love. It demands humility and respect, allows young people to take the journey at their own pace, or not at all. It recognises that we’re guests in schools and need to behave in the way we would expect guests to behave in our own homes and churches: with respect to the rules and practices of that community.