Many of the safe spaces we create for children and young people take place in schools, either to allow young people to experience more of life to the full, or to create opportunities to explore the Christian faith. Here’s an overview of what we’ve been up to over the last term or so.
Clubs:
Last academic year we spent a lot of time getting to know our local schools and experimenting with various types of clubs for young people.. This school year has seen the swap from lunch and after school clubs, to working specifically with small groups of young people within each school to focus on specific themes and help plan Collective worships with them.
This month we restarted working with the Worship Leaders at Grace Darling Primary School after summer, and have just started working with the Light Ambassadors at William Leech Primary School to plan some Open the Book Collective Worships. You can find out more about Open the Book here: https://www.biblesociety.org.uk/get-involved/open-the-book/
Our first story was Jonah, with the young people helping to plan and lead the Collective Worship and telling the story of Jonah to their schools using the Open the Book resources, along with the help of some of our wonderful Open the Book volunteers.
We have also been working alongside Thomas Bewick Primary School to begin a lunch club that focuses on how we can explore our differences and communicate effectively with each other, whilst playing games and most importantly, eating chocolate biscuits! Finally in Primary Schools we’ve been working with the Light Ambassadors in Bishop’s Primary school to help them think about the themes of their collective worships and take part in leading their schoolmates in collective worship.
As well as all this we’ve been running a board game and conversations club in Duke’s Secondary School as part of their lunchtime “enrichment” clubs.
Transitions:
July saw the beginning of school transition periods. We spent some time within the NCEA primary schools leading It’s Your Move 
lessons for the Year 6’s. These sessions focus on looking at fears, changes and transitions, whilst we explored the Old Testament story of Joseph and the ups and downs of his story, thinking about how it could be applied to their stories of transitions. Each young person was also given an It’s Your Move Booklet that were donated by their local parish Church (St Bartholomew’s Cresswell, St Bartholomew’s Newbiggin, St John’s and St Andrew’s Seaton Hirst).
Alongside these transition lessons, we also spent some time in NCEA Duke’s Secondary school during their transition week, to spend some time with the future Year 7’s and help to be a familiar face in a new space.
Prayer Spaces:
Following on from the success of prayer spaces at Bishop’s and William Leech schools in Spring, we ran Prayer Spaces in Schools at St Andrew’s Church, where Thomas Bewick school joined us class by class. As with last time it was wonderful to hear young people’s thoughts on prayer an reflection, and to see them take the opportunity to explore those themes practically through the spaces.