Pentecost Challenge
In Religious Education, the Year 10s are learning about the importance of Pentecost to the growth and spread of the Church. Today they undertook a Pentecost Challenge, where they had to reimagine the event occurring at Santa Maria College in present day.
The girls wore a headband on their heads with a small flame, as a sign of the Holy Spirit descending upon the Apostles and appearing as tongues of fire, to strengthen them to go out and spread the word of God.
Their challenge was to act as the Apostles did and spread the word of God in their own community ‘marked’ as an Apostle of Christ. This was done to provide insight into the issues that faced the Apostles at the time. Many experienced ‘social persecution’, which was out of their comfort zone. As the students had to repeat the story of Pentecost to multiple people, this taught them valuable revision tools such as the importance of repetition and of teaching others as tools for learning. This was an opportunity for students to connect their learning to real-life and learn in a creative and new way
Below are some of the experiences from the Year 10 students.
“The Pentecost Challenge included wearing a headband with information about the Pentecost event written on it and a flame to symbolise the Holy Spirit. We had to wear the headbands around school for the whole six hours, including during class and even recess and lunch. We also had to inform others about the event of Pentecost as though we ourselves were some of Jesus’ disciples.
“This challenge helped my learning of Pentecost as I had to memorise the story and repeat it to many different people. The main challenge I faced from others while participating in this challenge were the strange, judgemental looks I received from others and what many people said looked like a candle, on my head.
“From this activity, I have learnt how intimidating it must have been for the disciples and apostles to preach the story of God to others, especially if those people were strangers.”
“Doing the Pentecost Challenge today definitely helped my learning of this period of the early church. It allowed me to repeat the story to others over and over until it basically became common knowledge and I didn’t even need to try and think of what to say.
“The biggest challenge I faced was other students looking at us with judgemental expressions, because they had no clue what we were doing and we probably did look a bit strange.
“Completing this challenge allowed me to understand how daunting it must have been for the disciples when they were spreading the word of God.”
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Author: Santa Maria College
Santa Maria College is a vibrant girls school with a growing local presence and reputation. Our Mission is to educate young Mercy women who act with courage and compassion to enrich our world. Santa Maria College is located in Attadale in Western Australia, 16 km from the Perth CBD. We offer a Catholic education for girls in Years 5 – 12 and have 1300 students, including 152 boarders.
