Spent a lovely evening last night at a joint Churches Together service at Truro Methodist Church. I realised anew, that at the heart of the Christian message is the message of love. And then I started thinking about what is at the heart of every therapeutic thing that we do.....
I remember being given an English GCSE class to teach in a 6th form college. I was taking over from another teacher who had gone on sick leave, and was told the class were 'the dregs'; they weren't expected to pass their GCSE, but the college received money for 'bums on seats' so they had to provide a teacher for them. They were certainly a challenging class to teach, and it became clear early on that wading through the GCSE syllabus was fairly pointless. So I started to ask them about their lives, their stories, to listen to them. Not surprisingly they told of hardship, poverty, suffering and discrimination. And for a few minutes towards the end of the session, I would throw in some English for good measure. They were bemused. We continued in this way, slowly building relationships.
One girl missed the deadline for her coursework. I remembered her telling me that she worked at McDonalds, so I rang them up, found her, and arranged to meet her to collect her coursework. More bemusement.
My reward? College results for English GCSE were, to my memory, about 38%; my 'dregs' 52%.
What matters? Love matters.
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