Recruiting and training a team

Here are some tips:

Who will you need?

You need people who are:

Prayerful
Inclusive – welcoming towards pupils with differing needs, abilities, beliefs and backgrounds
Reflective – able to listen, ask careful questions and be alongside the pupils
Professional – in the sense that you are confident they will work to the school policies and will maintain an appropriate level of confidentiality
Safe – being a safe person, and ensuring that the prayer space is safe for the pupils to use

Where will you find your team?

Most teams are formed from staff within your school. School chaplains, classroom teachers and integration or classroom aids. However if you’re looking to include volunteers, hand-pick your ‘dream team’. Ask people who already serve on church teams. Ask ex-teachers, parents and especially grandparents. You can take risks with a couple of prayer activities that might or might not work, but you mustn’t take any risks with your prayer space team.

How many people will you need?

When experienced school staff are involved, it’s possible to run a space with just two adults eg a teacher and an integration aid. (although for 4, 5 and 6 year olds, we would recommend having an adult for every prayer activity). If you’re hosting the prayer space with a volunteer team we would recommend having 4 or more adult volunteers hosting the space as it is a different dynamic in the classroom when you don’t have an existing relationship with the students. If students are hosting a space during a lunchtime we would recommend at least 2 students working together.

Hosting a prayer space with less people makes it harder to be fully aware and responsive to what’s going on, and the risks increase. It’s possible, of course, to host a prayer space with a much bigger team, but it doesn’t necessarily make it better – just busier. Too many team members can sometimes ‘crowd’ a prayer space, and discourage pupils from participating.

We encourage Prayer Space hosts to keep an eye on the appropriateness of comments posted at the prayer spaces and if necessary to take down any comments that are unsuitable for the class to read.

Safe recruitment

All adult team members should have a Working With Children Check ( Vic, SA, NSW, WA) Ochre Card (NT), Blue Card (Qld), Working with Vulnerable people (ACT, Tas) and should be familiar with the school’s safeguarding policies and procedures.

Preparing/training your team

Your prayer space teams may include all kinds of people… teachers, chaplains, children’s workers and youth workers, church ministers and members, parents and grandparents and even students themselves. If they haven’t already been involved in a prayer space team, it’s important that you prepare and train them well. To do this, you could:

Encourage them to explore this website and read the stories from other prayer spaces
Show them some of the videos from other prayer spaces
If possible, take them to visit another local prayer space
If possible, take them along to one of our workshops, or host one yourself

Caring for your team

During the prayer space itself, please remember to look out for your team. Ask them how they’re doing every now and again. It’s good to pray together at the start and the end of every day.

Step 5

Recruiting and training a great prayer space team.