Author Archive: pacestaging

PACE Update

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Last week we held a Prayer Spaces event at La Mare Primary as we have been doing the past few years. The focus this year was “Being Kind to Others and Being Kind to the World.”

The stations we set up were:

Plastic Planet – where we discussed the plastic pollution in the sea and looked at how we can increase our use of reusable products instead of single use. 
Helping Hands – the children could put acts of kindness into an order, thinking about which they thought were important to them and then choose one to do during the next few days.
Quiet Area – our bubble tube tent where many nearly fell asleep! 
Carbon Footprints – a brand new station discussing how we can save energy in the everyday things and reduce our carbon footprint.
Thankful Ribbons – reflecting on what the children were thankful for. 

The children responded very well to each of these stations and reminded us how aware they are of current issues in the world including the Ukraine conflict. Many commented on being thankful for their freedom whilst thinking of these and Liberation Day. The older children thought more practically about helping with beach cleans, turning off the taps and lights more as well as taking the brave step to be kind to someone when it’s not always easy.  

A huge thank you to the school and to our wonderful volunteers who helped us over the three days. Next week we are at Vale Primary for three days too. We’re very excited as it’s been a few years since we last held a Prayer Spaces there. Please pray for a positive response from the school and children.


We also had a great week at La Mare High School exploring ‘Evil & Suffering’ with their Year 8 – good discussions and some very thoughtful contributions from the 4 classes of almost 100 students. We talked of the mixed blessing(?) of ‘free will’ but left them with the promise that ultimately all wrongs and injustice will be righted with the promise that ‘….God will wipe away every tear’ and there will be ‘no more death or mourning or crying or pain’ as ‘God will make everything new’ (Revelation 21:4-5). Amazing to have the opportunity to share such a message of hope in such difficult and challenging times. This year has seen a new breakthrough at La Mare High as we have so far been involved in teaching Years 7, 8, 10 and 11.

 

PACE Update

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We hope you all had a lovely Easter. We can’t quite believe we are into our final term of 2022 already! Time flies when you’re busy!

We started the term with the training of 3 new presenters for OT Mini. Our own Lisa, Tom Saddington and Bryan Pill all trained up over 3 days led by Phil. They’ve already started putting it into practise at Blanchelande leading alongside Phil and Nigel. We’re so excited to see our team grow and be able to deliver more courses throughout Guernsey. Phil and Frances have also started a new course at Amherst this week.

Big news this week with our first ever lessons taught at Elizabeth College – exploring a ‘Christian Worldview’ with Year 10 GCSE groups. We covered some of the big themes at the heart of the Christian faith, particularly focussing on Jesus life, death and resurrection! We’re so pleased to have been invited to teach these lessons and are looking forward to going back again. 

Our lunch clubs are back too, BOLT clubs will finish their courses from last term after having to be put on hold due to COVID cases. It’s great to welcome the children back to the group and enjoy playing games together! In secondary schools, our regular groups have returned and again we are pleased to see them.

Our AGM date has had to be changed and so will now be Tuesday 5th July at Delancey Elim Church 7-9pm. Please make a note of this date change. We will be discussing important changes for the future of PACE so hope to see you there!

 

PACE Spring Newsletter!

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Here is our end of term newsletter, we hope you enjoy reading about what we have been up to over the past few months. 

Please note that PACE’s AGM will be taking place on Monday 20th June and we would really encourage you to come along. We will be discussing the future of PACE’s work and what the team will look like come September 2022. We hope that you will stand with us in prayer as we seek God’s vision for the future of this amazing work.

Click on this link below to see the newsletter!

PACE Newsletter Spring 2022

Have a lovely Easter!

The PACE team 🙂

Easter in a Box!

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With some of our work put on hold due to the restrictions we are focusing on our launch of Easter in a Box: The Movie. 

Last week the team held a training evening for our volunteers and introduced them to the lesson. Very similar to Christmas in a Box, this lesson uses 6 boxes to go through the Easter story. The twist to this is it’s in the style of a movie! Each box is a scene and introduces the characters as the cast, the props to set the scene and a clapperboard to start and end the scene. 

We decided to launch this in three schools this year and see how they run before launching it in other schools in 2023. We will be bringing this to Blanchelande, St Mary and St Michaels and Notre Dame over the next few days. 

Thank you to Bristol Schools Connection for this amazing resource and making it available for all to use! 

 

PACE Update

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Over the last 2 weeks we have delivered a number of lessons on the ‘Christian views on Creation’ at La Mare High School and Blanchelande College. We explore Genesis 1 by watching the Creation video that Victoria made, this can be watched here. The students then have an opportunity to ask questions and we discuss ‘Is there anything that could be left out of the story?’ ‘Do you think the story is in the right order?’ and ‘What do you think about God being a creator?’ These lead to some very interesting discussions with debates often breaking out about do we really need the birds and the fish!!! We conclude the lesson by looking at stewardship and the value that God places on humanity as the pinnacle of his creation with a special role to play in the world. 
 
Last week concluded our time at Le Murier school working with Year 9 on their module for their ASDAN qualification. The students have worked really hard to put together an assembly on Jonah, which included acting out the story and then sharing how we all make mistakes sometimes but we can all have a second chance. One students who uses a speech tablet called Phil over before the performance of the assembly began to share a message with him that read ‘I am so excited!’ It was really great to see the students engage so well with the story and give an amazing presentation to the other students. 
 
We have also just started our current primary assembly. Before the restrictions started we took this to Vauvert, Melrose, Forest and Blanchelande. The assembly focuses on Peter’s denial and using some acting for the storytelling, we look at how Peter made a mistake but he learnt from it and Jesus forgave him. He went on to do great things, despite messing up! We encourage the children to be brave and learn from their mistakes.
 
 
Unfortunately a lot of our planned work including assemblies and lunch clubs have been put on hold for the time being. We encourage you to pray for the situation in the island and for the schools. We’re sad that we might not be able to visit as many schools over the next few weeks but hope that with changes we can still continue delivering some lessons.
 
 
 

PACE Update

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Phil and Lisa led an assembly at Ladies College on the theme ‘Respect for life’. They reflected on events that have happened over the last few years where little respect had been shown as well as giving students the opportunity to pause and reflect and think about the terrible events happening in Ukraine right now. Drawing on the teaching of Jesus about ‘loving your neighbour as you love yourself’ (Matthew 22:39) they encouraged the students to think about the importance of being kind to others. They explained that Jesus went a step further to say ‘love your enemies’ (Matthew 5:44) yes, love those people who you might struggle with or find annoying and challenged the students to think about building bridges with people who they don’t see eye to eye with. The assembly was well received by the schools with teachers offering praise for the message they had given. 
 
The team have also been busy delivering lessons at Blanchelande College on ‘The Problem of Evil and Suffering’ to Year 7 students. The lesson explores ‘the different types of evil in the world’ and asks the questions ‘Where does evil come from?’ and ‘What does the Bible have to say about how to respond to evil?’. We end the session by looking at some Christian charities and what they are doing to combat evil and suffering in our world. The students have engaged well with the lessons and asked some interesting questions. 
 
In the session we look at the importance of freewill and how God didn’t create robots. We do a quiz to see if they can name some famous robots from movies, look at the pictures below, how many robots can you name?
 
 

Behind the scenes the team are also working on a project – another virtual assembly! We thought it would be beneficial to have a backup assembly that can be sent out to primary schools if for some reason we are unable to visit. This one includes some of our loved puppets acting out the story of Esther. Victoria is working hard using her creative talents to put the video together. 

Finally the team went along to another Godly Play session held by Eleanor at St Peter’s Church. This time the story was Ruth and it was great to see another effective way to tell the story in a different, visual way. We are hoping to include this method more in our lessons in primary schools. 


PACE Update

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This week sees the final lessons of some of our OT Mini courses at Forest and La Houguette. Feedback has been great from both teachers and children, commenting on the amount learnt in a few weeks and the fun, engaging way the lessons were taught. We’re always sad to leave a class we’ve got to know and spent time with but very pleased to have completed another course! With each course we improve our delivery, knowledge and resources.

Lisa and Phil along with Tom Saddington led some deep lessons on War this week at Blanchlande Year 11s. Both groups engaged well and had some interesting discussions. The lessons looks into the Christian views on War and their responses. Included in the lesson is a look into the film Hacksaw Ridge and the true story of Desmond Doss as a conscientious objector. Very interesting!

In our secondary lunch clubs this term we are looking at Big Questions including:
        – Has Science disproved God?
        – Can we trust the Bible?
        – If there is a God why do people suffer?
        – There are so many religions which one do I choose?
We have used some interactive quizzes or fun light hearted activities to introduce these themes which then spark great conversations with the students. Below are some mind maps that have been produced in the discussions.

 

PACE Update

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With restrictions easing in schools, we are very pleased to be able to start our lunch clubs again this week! It’s great to see the students and catch up after Christmas. We love that we can provide a fun, safe place for them to hang out in secondary schools. BOLT clubs are starting this week and next at Vauvert, La Mare, Beechwood, St Martins, Forest, Notre Dame and Castel. We have spent some time revising the plans and decided to start a fun sticker collection for each pupil. Each week they will receive a sticker relating to the theme and by the end of the term they will be able to keep them to remind them of what they have learnt at BOLT! It’s been a fun, creative project! Here’s an example of some of the stickers.
 
Last week Lisa and Phil led PACE’s first in school virtual assembly. In a quiet hall with a camera in front of them they were beamed to all the students in their classrooms. It was quite a surreal experience as it was very strange not having students to interact with but it was great to be able to share with the whole school. The assembly theme was ‘when bad things happen to good people’. We explored the story of Joseph and how he had a lot of bad things happen to him but every time something bad happened he had a choice of how to respond and instead of choosing to be bitter he chose to become better. We concluded that we aren’t promised an easy life, there is a time for all things (Ecclesiastes 3) but as Christians we believe that God promises to be with us through all those times, he was there for Joseph and he can be with us now. Know that whatever you are going through you don’t have to go through it alone.
 
This term has also seen the return of ASDAN at Le Murier School. Phil and Lisa are really enjoying working with a group of Year 9 students to help them complete a module of their ASDAN qualification. They work with the students to help them prepare an assembly which they will deliver to Year 7 and 8. This time we have chosen the story of Jonah and the theme of “having a fresh start.” We explore how God gave Jonah a second chance and how in life we all need a fresh start sometimes. The students are engaging really well and are enjoying working out how to best tell the story and how to explain what we can learn from it. You can see in the picture below one of the props we are using to tell the story! 
 
 
 
 

PACE Update

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Happy New Year! We hope you had a great Christmas and New Year!

We’re back and excited for what 2022 will bring us. Each term we try to hold a Quiet Morning – a time for us as a team to receive teaching as we give out so much in our work. This time we headed to St Saviours and Sarah-Jane Allen hosted us in the lovely upper room of their Hall. SJ led us through the theme of choices and looking back at how God has been with us through difficult choices and how we can be encouraged that when things seem tough, He is always with us. One verse we read was Psalm 139:7-10:

“Where can I go from your Spirit?
Where can I flee from your presence?
If I go up to the heavens, you are there;
if I make my bed in the depths, you are there.
If I rise on the wings of the dawn,
if I settle on the far side of the sea,
even there your hand will guide me,
your right hand will hold me fast.”
 

Because of restrictions in schools, we are unable to restart our lunch clubs and assemblies at least for the time being. In response to this we have sent our primary schools our virtual assembly that we made during lockdown last year. This has been received well once again and we’re pleased that some of the schools are using it. If you would like to watch our assembly you can find it here!

We’re very pleased that we are able to go into some schools for lessons and OT Mini/ NT Mini. This week we have started new OT Mini courses at La Houguette with Nigel, Sarah-Jane and Eleanor, Castel with Phil and Forest with Sarah and Sian. Phil has also started an NT Mini course at Beechwood. We’re having to adapt a little but Week 1 has gone well so far!

Please pray for the schools, staff and students as they adjust to the new measures and get used to changes in their day to day activities.