One of the best things to do in any lesson is to get out of the classroom and go on a visit. While this involves a lot of preparation and negotiation with other departments in the school, it can be one of the most worthwhile learning experiences.
During my first year of teaching, I arranged a visit to a synagogue in Nottingham with my head of department. I was teaching Judaism to a Year 10 group as part of their GSCE religious education and one of the work units was on the place of worship. We had studied the synagogue, watched videos, written about it and even built a model synagogue in the classroom, but none of the pupils had been inside one.
Most synagogues are more than willing to show groups around and so one morning we arrived at school and bundled into the minibus and drove the hour or so to Nottingham. The pupils soon forget that there is a teacher on the bus and overhearing a bunch of 15-year-olds in full swing was an education in itself for this newly qualified teacher.
Arriving at the synagogue, we were greeted by the rabbi who was to show us around. He was absolutely superb, giving us a full tour of the synagogue and letting the pupils touch and feel all the artefacts we had only seen in the classroom. They were able to put on the tefillin, tallit and yarmulka, and use the yad to read the scroll from the Bimah. They also saw the scrolls in the Ark and appreciate that each of these things was extremely valuable - together they were worth more than pound;30,000!
There were some muted comments from the girls in the group as we were shown the segregated male and female seating arrangements, though the boys seemed to think it was a good idea.
The rabbi was keen to answer questions and the pupils, somewhat primed, were keen to ask. There was no doubt that the visit had contextualised much of the “book learning” that had happened in the classroom and helped the pupils understand that for this rabbi and the other people who came to worship in the synagogue, their faith was a daily reality.
So, it was time for a quick lunch at a decidedly non-kosher McDonald’s before getting back into the minibus and being greeted with a groan as the homework was handed out - they had to write about their experiences in the synagogue and the symbolic nature of each of the things they had seen. Even then, the pupils agreed that this had been a good RE lesson - high praise indeed!
Paul Hopkins Paul Hopkins runs the education consultancy Me, Myself and I
