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Report on St Gabriel's Conference
Report on St Gabriel's Conference
The St Gabriel’s RE Teacher Weekend was held on 16th & 17th October at Wokefield Park, Reading. Funded entirely by the Culham Institute, the weekend is for Secondary RE teachers and Primary teachers with responsibility for RE. Aiming to provide professional development, networking opportunities and showcasing the latest RE resources and ideas, the weekend hosts some 250 RE professionals.
Having secured a place at the conference (applicants must state their vision for the coming years, as well as the challenges they think the RE world will face) Debbie took the opportunity to offer a display of Baha’i resources. Our offer was accepted most positively – a huge step forward from the 2005 conference, where the response was that they would only accommodate the ‘Big Six’ faiths.
BREA mobilized admirably: A display cloth with the BREA logo was sewn; Pastoral Care leaflets printed; packs for each of the 200 delegates and 50-odd leaders / representatives and organisers were put together and Steve gave up his Saturday to man the display.
The response from teachers was phenomenal. Many came specifically to ask for information as they had built a study of the Bahá’i Faith into their plans for the coming weeks. Many more stopped out of interest as they hadn’t heard of the Faith before, or knew very little of it. Steve also caught up with old REC / QCA colleagues.
In all we gave away 171 packs – which include information about the BREA website – and had many very positive conversations. Moreover, John Mayled, one of the seminar leaders, spoke about teaching the Bahá’i Faith as part of a rich RE curriculum, and Debbie was able to mention Bahá’i teachings in several of the sessions.
At the end of a very inspiring conference, on thanking one of the Culham Trustees, Debbie was able to offer Bahá’i seminars for the next Weekend (2012) and was invited to send materials for the REToday website.
BREA worked professionally, speedily and in absolute harmony for this event –and I believe they did a marvelous job!
Debbie Tibbey
Registered in England – Company limited by guarantee No. 355737, Registered Charity (1967) 250851 The Assembly also represents the Bahá’í communities of the Isle of Man and the Channel Islands