Year 8 class homework heads to Nigeria

When the Religious Education (RE) department at a secondary school in Lancashire set students one of our letter-writing campaigns as homework, the response was amazing.

One of the students, Jennifer, created this message, which says: To Hajaratu. Thank you so much for sharing your story with us. It has really blessed me. I pray for you.”

It’s not often that homework travels across the world. For the Year 8 students of Ripley St Thomas Church of England Academy in Lancashire, their RE homework will be doing just that. 

“While teaching Year 8 students about the persecution of Christians around the world, I was provided with resources from Open Doors,” shares Mr Russell, teacher of RE and Geography at the school. 

“Their lesson resources and videos proved highly engaging to my classes, and this led to me exploring the Open Doors website,” he continues. “It was on this site that I came across the story of Hajaratu from Nigeria and felt that her plight would motivate our wonderful students to send her posters, prayers and messages of encouragement.”

• Are you a teacher? Get access to a bunch of free resources to help you teach your students about the persecuted church.

The department felt the letter-writing campaign for Hajaratu – whose story you can read about here – would make for ideal homework. “The response from the students was fantastic and often deeply moving,” Mr Russell says.

“It is a real privilege to witness young people responding in such a creative way and we as an RE department hope that this will spur our young citizens on to even greater social action in future.”