An interview with Montserrat Valldeperas, Teacher
Please introduce yourself and tell us something about your involvement with Carpenters School.
I am Montserrat Valldeperas. I am from Barcelona in Spain. For six years I was a dental technician before I became a teacher. I have always been interested in art since I was tiny. I like to paint and draw, also repairing furniture and antiques. Pottery is one of my main hobbies. I like to be creative.
I came to live in England two years ago. My first year, I was agency teaching but now I am a permanent teacher here at Carpenters School. I like it here. This school has a warm and friendly atmosphere. It’s like a family environment.
The children are from many different backgrounds. This area is quite poor and some of the families don’t seem to care about getting a good education for their children and we have quite a lot of absences – today they come, tomorrow they don’t come. This makes it difficult for them to follow a subject. But we always try to do what we can to help them fill in the gaps.
How do you approach the challenge of teaching Religious Education?
I am interested in exploring what all religions have in common. I am not going to push the children towards one view or another. There would be no advantage in that because everyone has the right to believe what they want and I believe no particular religion is better than another. I am trying to focus on giving the children information about all the different religions. That is quite a challenge because I don’t know everything myself. If I need more information I ask for help before I start teaching.
Are there moments when you wish you didn’t have to teach this subject?
There are always subjects in which you are stronger. I think I am stronger in science and maths. Other subjects like music and religion, I feel I am weaker in these areas. If we could have some specialist teachers I would be very happy if they could teach music and religion. But I have to teach these subjects so I try to do my best. I don’t just ignore these subjects. I will find a way to teach these subjects so that they are interesting to the children.
One of the ways I can do that is to use art as a way into the subject. I am the art coordinator so I try to put art into all subjects. It’s a good form of expression for the children. Sometimes they need a subject that isn’t focused in a purely academic way. Often the children remember a lot more if they have created something with their hands than if they are simply given a worksheet and told to absorb that information.
Here we are trying to teach Religious Education and my feeling is that we can do that best by giving the children lots of hands-on opportunities to learn. The children can learn through touch and exploring ways to express their feelings. The learning is still systematic but the challenge for me is to come up with interesting ways for them to learn.
Of course this takes a lot of planning and we need resources. We have paper and paints but I am always on the lookout for other things – cardboard boxes or whatever might be useful to use as a classroom resource.
You’ve said you are not a believer yourself. Does that effect the way you teach Religious Education?
Knowledge is not the same as belief. I can impart knowledge to the children without having a belief in a religion. The only problem is that I don’t know everything. Well, this is not really a problem but I have to put energy into discovering the knowledge myself so I can pass it on to the children. And it’s amazing how many little facts the children pass on to me about their religion.
I am always very careful about what I say about a religion. I don’t want to say anything that is not true or anything that doesn’t represent a particular religion accurately. Always - the important thing is that the children enjoy learning and at this stage with the children we are focussing not so much on the beliefs but on the tangible things they can see or touch or hear. We look at the different holy books, the different buildings, what people wear in the church. It is a good learning curve for me too.
What kind of preparation did you do with your class before the visit to St. John’s church?
Once we had made the plans for this visit I said to the children that we were going to learn about a place of worship. I didn’t say anything about Christianity. We talked about “what is a place of worship?”. What do people do in a place of worship – in general. Then I said we would visit a place of worship – a visit to St. John’s church and most of the children knew this building. I said that the vicar would show us around so we should come up with questions to ask him. At that time no-one had questions but after the visit everyone had many questions. How many pages does the bible have? Questions about the stained glass. Lots of children were impressed by the organ and wanted to know more about that. After the visit the children knew the various parts of the church, the altar, the lectern, the font, all the main features. They were very interested.
We talked about the feeling of being inside a church – that what goes on there is important – the words are important but so is the environment. The environment also has an impact on your feelings. The music, the sounds and the very nice smells. I wanted them to understand how the building made them feel.