An interview with Nicola Curren, Teacher
Please introduce yourself and tell us something about your involvement with Carpenters School.
I’m Nicola Curren. I’ve been teaching at Carpenters for five years. I’m a Year 3 teacher and also the Special Needs coordinator. We have children from many different backgrounds and religions. We try to be a very inclusive school. I like it here. It’s my first school and I haven’t given up yet.
What are your feelings about teaching RE? Is it something you enjoy or dread?
I’m okay with it now. When I first started I had my reservations: didn’t know much about the different religions, worried about questions coming up that I didn’t know the answers to. Children seem to have such strong views about religion and sometimes come out with some quite amazing beliefs but, of course, you don’t want to offend anyone. Sometimes I wasn’t sure how to deal with them. But now I use the children to help me and get them to explain things. Now we’ve introduced new teaching strategies which has really helped. Before it was all written activities but now we use role play and lots of speaking and listening. It’s very interesting. Personally I have no beliefs but I find it very interesting to find out about children’s beliefs and values.
The school seems to be moving towards more experiential forms of teaching RE. Are you happy with that?
Absolutely. The best way you can get children to learn is taking them out on visits and letting them experience things first hand. The results are much better than giving them a book to read. They come back from visits with hundreds of questions and a real desire to find out the answers. It’s much easier to encourage them to speak about what they saw or heard or felt. I can tell this approach is working because in discussion the children are really focussed on whatever is being discussed by me or the other children. They’ve shared an experience and then continue to share and communicate the thoughts and ideas that come up later.
Are there any problems when it comes to teaching a religion such as Christianity when most of the children in a class might be Muslim?
No, I don’t think that is a problem. We touch on most of the major religions. We tend to work in six week blocks and every religion gets its share. You have to remember that kids love RE, they absolutely love it. They’re very interested to learn about what their friends believe, what they wear at different festivals and then comparing it to what they do in their own religions. They love that.