Armidale's Peta Bale was recognised a special celebration of SRE in NSW public schools was held at NSW Parliament at the end of November. The event was used to showcase the benefits of Special Religious Education (SRE) in our schools.
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Peta has been an SRE teacher for more than 20 years and is in a team of five that has co-ordinated Protestant scripture learning within the town for the last five years.
It liaises with seven local schools to ensure that scripture is implemented in an efficient and community minded way within the schools.
"I am part of a team. And since I am a retired primary school teacher I seemed the obvious person to do the school liaison because I know teachers and principals around town," Peta said.
"It was a position that I kind of fell into."
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"We were all feeling quite unsure of ourselves at the time, and trying to rely on God to help us understand what we needed to know and how to go about things. We had a lot of help from the past co-ordinator.”
Peta said it was a huge task for the larger schools to organise their scripture classes.
"There's [Protestant] scripture, Catholic scripture and then there is non-scripture and in some cases there are other classes as well," she said.
"So the bigger schools have quite a challenging time sorting out classes."
There is a team of about 20 teachers who actually work in the the classrooms.
Peta has a good relationship with the School SRE Liason officer and they work co-operatively and collaborately to ensure that SRE is a positive experience for the school, the students and the SRE teachers.
She communicates with the Armidale Ministers Fellowship (who represent the different providers in Armidale) to ensure they are aware of the ongoing provision of SRE by the combined team of teachers.
"This is a Protestant SRE and we cover all the schools. It's wonderful to meet a new class and get to know the kids. Either answer their questions about God and the Bible, or at least find out for them, and teach them what's in there," Peta said.
"It is an education that we're doing, we're not trying to make people change their mind.
"We're educating kids as to what the Bible is about, so that thay can then make decisions when they chose to."
Scripture teachers are encouraged also with Peta's quarterly development seminars.
