World Values Day - Values in Action!

The Big Question: 

How can you bring your school values to life?

Case Study: St Paul’s and All Hallows’ Primary Schools, Tottenham, London.

A collaboration between The Big Think and dance charity Streetz Ahead.

Dance Coach Zak Harry (Streetz Ahead) on school field besides Spurs ground!

Value in Action - TRUTH: Pride

The Big Question: Should we have pride in our changing bodies?

The Big Think team has been busy creating the final 32 lesson kits to complete our values-based Social and Emotional Learning (SEL) programme for primary schools. We are also working on the development of a Community Values in Action Dialogue series to use in schools to help engage the wider community in school-based social action projects.

So, when the theme of this year’s World Values Day was announced as Values in Action, we jumped on the opportunity to create something special to share on the day!

One of our new tricky values is Pride (which comes under our core value of TRUTH) since this value can have both positive and negative connotations. We thought this value theme linked well to the puberty element of the new Relationships and Sex Education (RSE) requirements and so commissioned author Yasmin Floyer to write a playscript highlighting the common worries Year 5/6 children have about changes happening or not happening to their bodies as they approach puberty and this session was then piloted with Year 6 at TBT school St Paul’s and All Hallows’.

This got the TBT team thinking – How can we go further at bringing the value of Pride to life and show it in action? How can we show the Year 6 girls in our pilot class that we should celebrate what our bodies can achieve, rather than what they look like?

Here our collaboration with dance charity Streetz Ahead was born! We were offered their lead instructor Zak Harry to run 4 sessions with seventeen Year 6 girls to create a performance based on pride in our bodies – culminating in a showcase film to launch on World Values Day! See the film and what the girls thought of the project here.

Meanwhile, our pilot Community Values in Action Dialogue, also at St Paul’s and All Hallows’ Primary, happened on Tuesday 13 October 2020 and involved SLT members, teachers, governors, the Vicar, pupils, parents and representatives from the local Tottenham Hotspur Foundation. We asked The Big Question: How can we bring our school values to life in the community?

Perhaps this has got you thinking…How does your school show your Values in Action? It might be noticing small daily acts, learning through a creative curriculum or through larger community projects.

Whichever way, using values in action to frame your work – big and small - certainly makes for very lively and engaging learning for the whole school community. We recommend you get involved now!