By Marc Dear, 3rd Grade Teacher
I recently attended the Friends Council on Education “Making Meaning of Meeting – Meeting for Worship in Friends Schools” workshop for Lower and Middle schools. There were 16 Friends schools represented in all.
It was great to be among such a gathering of Friends to talk about how we bring Meeting for Worship to life in our schools. It was also affirming to hear of the different challenges and practices many Friends schools work through each year. We had time to meet in small groups to discuss parent participation, common vocabulary, and curricula developed to teach children about Quaker worship. I chose to work with a group of educators from K -12 schools to discuss how our schools bring Quakerism to life across 3 divisions. One take-away was to choose a testimony each year that the entire school would use as a guide for the year. Banners would be created to decorate the campus and help keep the focus on the chosen testimony. I left the workshop feeling good about our work here at Westtown and with a number of fresh ideas to share with my colleagues. It was a day well spent.
In A Class Of Our Own 