Have I told you lately that I love ...

My Job?

The last few days have crushed together to make a week that has been like many others in terms of being full of variety and amazingly wonderful people and providing me with fun, challenges, fun, heartbreak, excitement and fun!

I've seen marriages that have lasted around the same time I've been on earth ended through the death of one of them and been privileged to help make sense of it all. I've seen people trapped and perhaps made to disappear because of mental health issues, been involved in people whose circumstances scare me to death and been blessed by the fact that, generally speaking, people are nice.

The odd thing is that more people want to be loved, taken an interest in and engaged  than don't and the role I have allows me to do that and call it work - now I have to ask you, Can you get anything cooler than that?'

This week I have done Harvest services in schools and been challenged to explain what Hallowe'en is in an assembly (an ad hoc Hallowe'en session - wasn't planned) and realised that there's only sixty-something days to Christmas and, as I write, only seven days to half-term. Yes, even the children wish their lives away looking towards special dates and living through the rest to get to them.

I seen vocations become uncovered, abilities accepted and people blessed - and still it comes under the label of work!

The variety and excitement open to us as minister's only comes about if you - the church members, the bereaved, the lost, the hurting, the needy, the suffering, the general public, the passer-by and the blinking nuisances come and engage with us. So if you're not, then you're making true the misconception that I, as a dogcollar, 'only work for an hour on a Sunday'.

So here's an invitation from all the clergy (for I'm sure I speak for them on this):

Come and make yourself known to us - turn up at church, stop us in the street, call us on the telephone, come and see us (and discover how little we hide in the vicarage) and be a blessing (and blessed too).

Go Ahead Make my Day

(and make me pray!)

How to communicate effectively

I've just seen this (Thank You Mark) and have to say that this is one of the most effective and entertaining ways I have ever seen to get across an extremely important and serious message.

I won't say who produced it but will let those who watch it find out at the end!

But it deserves applause and thanks - I will be using this in the schools I visit this coming academic year.

This has to be a superlative in its field.

This Week - A retrospective

Well, here we are with another week gone and Sunday beckoning. I have been asked to give a brief review of the week that was for someone who wanted to consider various sorts of ministry (apparently we are an estate church!). So here goes:

Sunday: Couple of Common Worship communion services, Annual Church meeting
PM BCP Evensong.

Monday: Daily Office, Staff meeting, Drop-in session (free tea/coffee/cake and biscuits),
PM  funeral visit, administration, Kid's Club, paperwork, Men's meeting (yum!)

Tuesday: Daily Office, Church's Together meeting,
PM administration, home visits, Chaplaincy

Wednesday:  Daily Office, Missioner work
PM Missioner related (office), Funeral and interment, school visit, visits, Housegroup (new)

Thursday: Daily Office, Communion service, drop-in session (free tea/coffee/cake and biscuits),
PM Pastoral visit, School Assembly, paperwork, Missioner teaching session (an expert being anyone away from home!)
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Friday: Daily Office, broken computer!!, funeral (Crem')
PM 3 hours off (Sarehole Mill), Kid's Club, office stuff,

Saturday: Daily Office, service planning, chaplaincy

And that's the week done and dusted and ready to go again.

Hope this helps!

A, very, brief look at my week (now you can see why I love this ministry lark!).

Motivating our children

And setting their sights high - surely one of the goals of education.

Education is not about maximising the child's earning potential but helping them to fulfil the potential that they have to be exactly who they are and to do what they might actually enjoy, or even be 'called'  to do and be.

But apparently I am greatly mistaken as the recounting of a recent 'careers' lesson at one of our local schools clearly shows. Here's a brief rendition of the lesson as performed by the reduced 'Vic the Vicar' theatre company:

"Good morning children, welcome to the careers lesson. I am Ms Nohope; let's begin with some ground rules:

First, it's a very good idea to be realistic and to start from the very first stages of thinking about what you want to do by realising that you won't be living out your dreams when you enter the world of work; so let's drop ideas of being footballers, singers, actors or other glamorous jobs and start thinking about jobs you can really do! Jobs like working in supermarkets, shops and perhaps even motorway service areas.

Now we've got that out of the way you need to realise that setting your sights too high just leads to disappointment (thinks to self: I never thought I'd end up in up place like this!) and it's better to aim low and get what you can, isn't it?

So (points to pupil), what you you like to be? (The answer is that they'd like to be a doctor)

Well that's good but you'd be better off perhaps trying to be a nursing auxiliary as that's probably within your grasp.

Yes, I know you want to be a doctor but I know about these things and that's not really realistic from a school like this (thinks: in a town like this) and you'll only end up disappointed whereas if you take my advice you'll get what you want and have a nice blue uniform too!

Yes, I do know what I'm talking about - I'm just trying to help you make choices that you have a chance of fulfilling. "

Scene shimmers and lesson ends leaving our heroic careers teacher to dream about what would have happened if they had only managed to become whatever it was that they failed to do. . . . .  And the children to accept that they are but plebs - yes, schooling is no longer aspirational and enabling, it is merely the means by which those who have are given more and those from less aspirational areas are schooled to accept their lot (and to know their place).

Many years ago I found myself in a headmaster's office in Hounslow fighting with teachers who regarded the kids from the estate I served as nothing (at best) more than potential baggage handlers, airport workers and shop workers. All they sought to do was contain the kids until the reached an age where they could be sent out into the world to take their place in the world of benefits, social housing or the airport.

I struggled to get the school to raise its game and serve their pupils better - but like DH Lawrence's  lovely Miss Brangwen they merely clung to the belief that it was cruel to show them a wider world when all they had was Hounslow West and no aspirations.

It was wrong then and it is wrong now. I fought then and, no surprise coming, I'm willing to take up the gauntlet again, especially as we see our state school system eroded and destroyed by Adonis' disgraceful class engineering that is Academies.

Game on teacher Dudes - Molesworth was right: 'Down with Skool!'

Mission or Maintenance (1) - schools

Last week I was challenged by some thinking relating to the wonderful area of what we used to call 'Job Design and Quantification' that would, in my humble opinion, have made the Golgafrinchams* appear highly capable and adept individuals. One of the many interesting elements in this consideration of the clergy roles related to schools in the parish, district or area in which our heroic cleric was located. It went just a little like this:

If you have a church school in your patch then you add some points to the total job workload equation

BUT

If you don't happen to have a church school in your patch but have non-church schools

AND

You just happen to be involved there doing assemblies, RE coordination and perhaps even act as a member of the governing body then you award yourself:

NIL POINTS (all a bit Eurovision this isn't it?).

Yes indeedy folks, that's right - NIL POINTS!

Now one of my colleagues who was chair of governors at one school and was engaged in doing assemblies in four or five schools did all of this as part of their 'out of hours interest'. Turns out this isn't part of their job at all - it was their hobby!

Another of colleagues (who rarely went into the local church school for assemblies and was more often than not missing from governor's meeting) who had church schools in their patch had more points (and points could mean posts when reorganisation comes a knocking) with less real engagement in the school or the community that that role should have brought.

All seems a bit wrong when we start legislating for what is part of the job in such a way as we make pastoral and missional engagement something that is other than the clergy role doesn't it? But that's what we are apparently faced with (and that is a real ..... [insert you own word - I'm lost for one]!).

So here's a hint for all those who read this and find they have non church schools in your area - doing them is not, apparently, part of the pastoral or parochial ministry associated with the church, it's merely your hobby.

And, if you don't fancy schools ministry then all you need to do is avoid those with church schools in and you're sorted - all the others are merely a potential hobby and (of course) that's 'just not your calling' is it?

Simple? (Well some people obviously are!!!)

Pax

*If you don't know about the Golgafrinchams, can I suggest you read the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy?

Time to sack OFSTED?

The news that some one thousand schools previously considered by OFSTED to be 'outstanding' are to be re-inspected causes me great concern for a number of reasons.

My first concern is how inspectors can assess a school as 'outstanding' and then suddenly reconsider their assessment as the teaching was subsequently regarded as "not have reached the highest standard". "The teaching was below standard," doesn't cut it because it it was then the school wasn't outstanding, was it?

This doesn't speak of poor teaching but substandard inspectors and this should trigger an investigation into OFSTED and, as we so enjoy our blame culture, inspectors and those who control them should be in the dock. It's inspectors that should be rolling here nit schools and their heads!

Of course we could always look to a conspiracy theory approach and wonder to ourselves whether there might be some future correlation between this re-inspection and the creation of more academies (which according to some of the reel Akademmix put it recently: 'Academisation' or 'Academification' - bunch of blinking loonies!!!). If this occurs then the inspectors are substandard at all, they're much worse and so is the source of the intervention and unseen direction.

In an education meeting recently I was shocked to hear a head speak of how some schools were being placed in 'special measures' so that they could be taken over and made into academies as a 'hostile take-over'. Boardroom terms for education, shocking and yet fitting as we see our schools taken out of the state education system and transformed into academies where freedom of information, parent governorship and many other aspects of schooling that we have taken for granted are no longer.

I'm happy to see inspectors work with the schools and any rise in standards has to be good but I'm not so sure that 'no notice' inspections are the right way to go. The few days warning schools get now is stress-inducing enough, but to have an inspection just descend is destined to put already overworked teachers into a place where the stress will be ever present and will be detrimental to the good running of our schools and will cause more stress-related departures of extremely good teacher.

Let's look at the realities:

Budgets are being cut and so teachers have to make choices:

a. Teach and because the budgets for TAs (Teaching Assistants) are reduced they also have to clear, do presentation work and the many subsidiary tasks that are not part of the teaching role proper.

b. Spend more and more time on the processes and paperwork that will be needed to satisfy, and provide audit trails, for the OFSTED inspectors and ignore the TA tasks.

c. Do the TA work, the lesson prep', the marking, the teaching, the clearing away and the various roles within the school (special needs, curriculum and the oh so many other little areas like after school activities, visit planning, the PPA - for which support is going by the board for some because of budgets and staffing issues) and all the required paperwork and see how long it is before a different career (or breakdown) beckons.

d. Just teach and be resigned to just making do and doing enough (which will work until the new disciplinary process sees you gone by the end of that term).

e. Place a knotted hankie on the head, stick a pencil up each nostril and consider the future as a retired teacher and wonder what your CPN will be like and what pills you'll be on!

I fear our education system is becoming commercialised and removed from the state and the pressures and manipulation of means and methods are leading us to a very bad place indeed. So if you're a parent or a dogcollar - get involved and join your local governors, friends of and anything else that will get you involved and informed . . . Hug a teacher (well say "Thank You' anyway - you won't get an ASBO for that!) TODAY!

I guess these words from a recently retired teacher who left on medical grounds of stress after their second OFSTED in as many years sums it all up:

What's the difference between OFSTED and a plastic surgeon?

A plastic surgeon tucks up features . . . . .

Religious Education - Observations and potential solutions

It wasn't that long ago that Ofsted were telling us that the quality of religious education in schools was declining and that something like 20% of schools were failing and providing inadequate religious education.

If we ignore the inane mutterings and protestations of humanists and secularists who drone on, respectively and, endlessly about their belief (or rather lack of it) being included in the RE curriculum or made optional we can see their are some obvious issues and some equally obvious solutions.

Religious education is all about educating schoolchildren about matters religious! It is supposed to do what it says on the tin, couldn't be simpler. Now the first problem is that many of the RE teachers I have met at various functions, conferences and the like are people of no, or perhaps limited, faith. I have yet to meet any language teachers who are unable to converse in the languages they teach or dialogue about the finer grammatical points and the the culture of the nations what speak their lingo! I have rarely met anyone who, unlike the teachers when I was a child, was a practising member of any of the mainline faith groups and could dialogue regarding their faith or any faith with any degree of confidence.

Solution the first
Religious education teachers need to be people of faith and need to be specialists in their chosen subject. Religion is not merely a matter of geography - we're in England and so we're Christian, Anil is from India and so has to be a Hindu, etc. I don't expect theological degrees, but I do expect understanding of the core values, practices and outworking.
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The next problem is one which if I understand the baccalaureate (B) correctly is set to increase. Religious Education might still be a 'core' subject, but it's points what wins prizes and there don't seem to be any attached to RE with regard to the IB. It might be a core subject but it, like assemblies which are now non-religious mumblings before the first lesson in many places, is is an observance rather than engagement role these days, and this appears to be likely to descend further rather than pick up.

Solution the second
Secularism is taught in every subject outside of the religious Education classroom. Everything is secular and this is naive and rather than supporting choice (which secularists claim to want but really mean 'their choice') secularists lay the seeds of dissent, conflict, misunderstanding and sectarian differences.

Regardless of the point-winning examination subjects, there is a need within a balanced society for people to have some understanding of the beliefs, attitudes and actions of others because of their faith. This is what brings peaceful co-existence. What point is there in having an intellectually equipped people who can't live alongside others (the secularist problem in a nutshell). So the solution is that we must teach faith issues - simple isn't it!
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Humanists drone on about not being included in the RE syllabus, but in case they haven't realised it, they are actually a 'non-religious' bunch of often confused and fatalistic people who come under the classification of 'philosophy' (flawed or skewed philosophy more often than not, but hey ho - it's an 'ology'!).

One school I engaged with a few years back had an anti-Christian, alternative faith, head of RE. This person used the lessons to proselytise (unsuccessfully) and to attack and ridicule the beliefs of the faiths they were supposed to be teaching about. With this talk of 'Big Society' the reality is that 'Big Society' is what Christians are, and have been since we first set up shop - it who Jesus is!

Solution the third
Those of us who are trained in matters theological and are able to dialogue and discuss regarding other faiths, the differences and the similarities, who are equipped to explain the philosophy of religion and the realities of faith need to get off of our fat backsides and offer ourselves to the schools. I visit schools and do issues like the 'shoah' and genocide, other faiths, ethical issues, moral choices and whatever else they ask me to bring in. I do this from infant through to 'A' level and find that open and honest engagement is always well received, even when agreement might not be forthcoming.
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So, if you are someone who complains about the falling standards of Religious Education in our schools here's the bottom-line (honestly it is):

Stop complaining and get out there and be the difference!