Chester Cathedral’s Canon Chancellor has come to the rescue of struggling RE teachers with her survival guide.
With 20 years under her belt teaching the subject, Jane Brooke’s The RE Teacher’s Survival Guide is aimed at primary school teachers.
Packed with tips, advice and guidance about how to teach RE, the book is a practical guide designed to help teachers tackle differing views surrounding religion.
It also contains creative idewas for teaching techniques and lesson planning.
As well as her duties at the cathedral , Canon Brooke works as an independent consultant for schools and local authorities to help improve teaching.
Canon Brooke described teaching RE as ‘challenging’ because she believes it lacks the sort of high-profile subjects such as English and maths attract.
She said: “The national curriculum is so full RE ends to get squeezed.
“But you have to teach it and the humanities in general otherwise children will not turn out to be well-rounded individuals.”
Canon Brooke said teachers do not receive enough tuition early on in their careers to help teach RE and she hoped her book would fill that gap.
She said: “When teachers are going through teacher training they only receive three hours on how to teach RE in three years - it’s very limited.
“A lot of primary school teachers are scared of RE because it involves faith and they’re worried they might say the wrong thing or offend someone.
“But a teacher doesn’t have to have a faith to teach RE just be able to present the facts.
“I really hope my book helps primary school teachers to teach the subject.”
