Friday, December 01, 2006
Castle Hill High School
Last Thursday we went into Castle Hill High School and taught the "Choices" class for six of their scripture classes. Unlike Model Farms, where there is one scripture teacher and the kids rotate around when they have scripture, at Castle Hill, they have a large group of scripture teachers come in on Thursday mornings and everyone has scripture at nearly the same time. The scripture teachers we met at Castle Hill High School are all young and seemed to primarily come from Hillsong Church.
Here are some pictures of us meeting with the scripture teachers before class in a meeting room in the school library:
Like everywhere else we have done the choices lesson, the kids responded well to it. Many of the kids were a little roudy, which is almost to be expected in classes of 7th and 8th graders, but when we shared our testimonies they were really interested and attentive to what we had to say.
A lot of our message was stuff they'd never heard before. One class genuinely had no idea whether "sexual purity" means you have sex or don't have sex--purity was a completely novel idea to those kids. And we thought they might understand integrity well since it appeared to be one of the school's "core values" that was on their bulletin board, but again, it was a message that if they had heard before it didn't sink in fully.
Jessica's Experience:
My (Jessica) heart was really broken for these kids. The school, as we understand it, has a little bit of a "bad reputation" compared to some of the other schools in the area. These kids desperately needed to hear the message we were sharing. I'm looking forward to the opportunity to go into this school again, and its been on my heart to pray for the scripture teachers at that school, that the word of God would penetrate these kids through their time at the school.
One of the teachers, "Diego" (because he is from San Diego actually) is a little bit of a legend aroudn the school. When I was at Castle Hill Shopping Centre on our day off on Monday I talked to a group of kids who were begging for change for the bus, and after asking whether I went to Hillsong and hearing why I was in Australia they asked whether I knew Diego, because he'd been their scripture teacher at Castle Hill High School. What a coincidence that I'd just met Diego a few days before and could connect to the kids on that level!
Here are some pictures of us meeting with the scripture teachers before class in a meeting room in the school library:
Like everywhere else we have done the choices lesson, the kids responded well to it. Many of the kids were a little roudy, which is almost to be expected in classes of 7th and 8th graders, but when we shared our testimonies they were really interested and attentive to what we had to say.
A lot of our message was stuff they'd never heard before. One class genuinely had no idea whether "sexual purity" means you have sex or don't have sex--purity was a completely novel idea to those kids. And we thought they might understand integrity well since it appeared to be one of the school's "core values" that was on their bulletin board, but again, it was a message that if they had heard before it didn't sink in fully.
Jessica's Experience:
My (Jessica) heart was really broken for these kids. The school, as we understand it, has a little bit of a "bad reputation" compared to some of the other schools in the area. These kids desperately needed to hear the message we were sharing. I'm looking forward to the opportunity to go into this school again, and its been on my heart to pray for the scripture teachers at that school, that the word of God would penetrate these kids through their time at the school.
One of the teachers, "Diego" (because he is from San Diego actually) is a little bit of a legend aroudn the school. When I was at Castle Hill Shopping Centre on our day off on Monday I talked to a group of kids who were begging for change for the bus, and after asking whether I went to Hillsong and hearing why I was in Australia they asked whether I knew Diego, because he'd been their scripture teacher at Castle Hill High School. What a coincidence that I'd just met Diego a few days before and could connect to the kids on that level!
