Its April… blimey
Finally I have failed the blog. I kept up with it for 5 months, yet have not touched it in 3 months. Which suprises me really. Well. in a way it doesnt, I was never good at keeping a diary or… anything like that. So sorry. I have learnt though, that if anybody is reading this, which from the stats shows me not many people are ( I dont blame them ) Then you want to know what I am up to in detail, and the best way for me to fill you in properly i think, is by talking to you in person. There are however, some things that would be good to post such as an outline of what I actually do during a typical week with Check It Out. So, as follows you will find some of the basic information I, in my overwhelmed state, left out of my blogs at the start of the year.
What we actually do:
The “Check It Out” team consisting of Taste – the band, and Diversion – the theatre company, typically arrive at a school around 6:30am Monday morning. Ouch. You can imagine what time we have to be awake before showers and breakfast and driving there… The reason we arrive so early is because our equipment takes about an hour and a half to set up, usualy in the school hall (or other such spaces e.g drama studios and dance halls) After setting up it takes at least half an hour for everything to be tuned up, soundchecked and for us to be have our morning practise/warm up, meaning that we are ready to go by the first lesson or assembly of the day. So thats why monday mornings sting a little… We stay in the hall all week and every lesson (sometimes every ish lesson) a different class will make their way to see us and we will then use one of 5 lesson plans that we have, generally decided by what age group the class is in.
lesson Plans:
At the start of each lesson we introduce ourselves and what we do. Then stress that we are not there to force our beliefs on to anyone, only to provide them with an oportunity to “check it out” for themselves. The last 10 minutes of the lesson are set apart for a question and answer session, which is where the most exciting things happen because kids really do have the most amazing, tough, out of the box and completely genuine questions.
Year 7 – Friends. This lesson looks at the importance of friends and the best ways to be friends with each other. Through a clip from “Friends” and a game we play, we highlight that nobody is perfect, and that if we want friendships to survive we need to be forgiving, otherwise every friendship would be ruined at some point. Throughout the lesson we refer to our relationship with God, in paticularly when introducing the songs, however the point is made at the end of the lesson that God has forgiven us for the stuff we have done, and if we want, we can start again with him.
Year 8 – Values. This is my favourite lesson because it contains so much and makes a very powerful and relevant point to the kids. The lesson explores the value and worth of a human being. With a piece of drama where a broken, old garden gnome ends up being sold for £10,000, we ask the question “how much is the person sitting next to you?”. Humans are priceless, of course, which then raises the question if a person cant be bought by money, then how do we show value and worth to someone? We play a clip from “Armageddon” which shows one character basically giving up his life for another by choosing to blow himself up… long story – so ask me if you want a full synopsis of the film … We make the link that Jesus said “No one has greater love than this, that he gives his life fore his friends”, but whereas armageddon is just a film, we believe that Jesus actually went out and did it. And thats why we give everything to God.
Year 9 -Forgiveness. This lesson is similar to the friends lesson, though we play a game where we read out 3 scenarios with two sections to them. The first section is read out and we see whether they think the person in the scenario should forgive or not forgive another character. Then the second section is read out giving a larger picture to the situation which normally changes things quite a bit, and we ask them again to see who would forgive now, or still not forgive. Which leads to us making the point that God hs forgiven us no matter what we have done, this illustrated through a testimony given by one of us.
year 10 + – Abi Values/Choices. This lesson is similar to a Values lesson, though because we are working with older teenagers we can go into more depth. Abi is the name of the 20 minute play that Laura and I perform and it makes up the main bulk of this lesson. Within this play the audience see a day in the life of this girl named Abi and the choices she makes throughout the day. Basically she doesnt make very good choices and ends up affecting her Dad, school mates and peers, teachers, a shop keeper and her careers officer. It is apparant that she lacks little self respect, nor any kind of respect to other people. Though all the time we see the side of her that is battling with the choices she makes, there is a side to her that would rather not be doing the things she is doing. In responce we ask either whether anybody thinks she is worth much as a person, then say that we believe she has massive worth to God and if she let him, he could help her to change. Or if it is a choices lesson we ask if anybody thinks she is making good choices in her life, then say we believe that if she let God help her, she could start to make better choices for herself.
… more to come, Under construction…,
