Interfaith Week

This week (10th-17th) is interfaith week! This is an opportunity to celebrate the diversity of faiths within our school community and celebrate difference (perfect that it has been anti-bullying week as well!) but also the similarities that many world faiths share and the importance of being aware of different beliefs and practices within our local community but also society. It is also an opportunity for us to provide a bit of an update on what has been happening in the department so far this year.

Every week is interfaith week in the REP department at Wellington School, with a variety of different religions being taught, ethical issues being considered and philosophical questions being debated (and not always answered!). Crucially we want everyone to feel comfortable and confident sharing their own beliefs and views whilst considering and understanding the views of others. We hope that some of these ideas are also being discussed at home but we aren’t expecting you to have all the answers either.

Many religious festivals have taken place over recent weeks and months and we have aimed to mark some of these in school within some of our lessons, including a Seder meal to celebrate the festival of Pesach (I won’t attach images, it wasn’t exactly a viewing spectacle!) and Year 7 pupils considering different religious views about life after death, linking to All Souls Day.

Others include the festival of Diwali, which pupils will learn more about later in the year but was celebrated earlier this month, the celebration of the birth of Guru Nanak is also on the horizon, Bodhi day which celebrates the Enlightenment of the Buddha and Christmas of course! 

As a department we would love to do more to mark some of these festivals and give pupils more of an opportunity to learn about different faiths and traditions that families of our school community are celebrating. Please keep an eye out moving forward for more information on festivals that are being celebrated on the screens around school, keep contributing your brilliant ideas in your lessons and thank you to those of you that have contributed to some of our extra-curricular clubs (Philosophy Club has proven to be very popular!) and trips (including to the Manchester Jewish Museum, the UoM animal testing facility and our upcoming trip to Liverpool to see/discuss some of the cities religious sites but also the World Museum and Walker Gallery) that have been running this year and there will be more to come in this regard.

Mr Harrison