TEACHING THE TEACHERS

by Martin Blewett

From Bristol to the Black Sea and back in a Mazda van? During our 6,000 mile journey Paul Wakefield and I travelled the length and breadth of Romania.

Our tour was arranged by the Romanian Association of Sunday School Teachers, an organisation which represents about 1,000 teachers throughout the country.

Our task was to lead a one-day seminar in each of nine different cities, with the aim of better equipping the Sunday School teachers. In particular, we had been asked to demonstrate the use of puppets and sketchboards in communicating with children. Other subjects included: strategy in children's church, craft ideas, activities, games, memory verses, Bible stories and basic Bible dramas.

Our first port of call in Romania was Vatra Dornei (see the article in Borderlines N^o3 about Iosef and Ovidiu, who live in this town). Then we headed back to Cluj for our first seminar.

For the next two weeks we travelled and taught, taught and travelled. Our itinerary took in the big cities of the North West like Cluj, Arad and Timisoara. We drove along the southern border with Serbia and along roads jammed with lorries bound for the beleagured little state of Macedonia. We visited the dusty, unlovely and unloved Bucharest and stayed in the austere Bucharest Institute of Theology.

We spent one night deep in the marshland of the Danube Delta staying at a Youth Camp built by local believers in a tiny forgotten village, and another night in a tiny log cabin high up in the Carpathian mountains with no electricity or running water.

Everywhere we went we were amazed at the friendliness and hospitality of the Romanian believers who fed us and gave us a bed for the night.

In all we spoke to 310 teachers, which was encouraging considering that most of the seminars were on week days. Some of the teachers travelled for up to eight hours to attend our seminar.

Most of the ideas and methods we presented were new to the teachers, and they were eager to learn. They appeared to face two main difficulties:

* Size of classes: Most teachers even in small churches taught classes of 50-70 children.

* Lack of materials: even the most basic of items, such as glue, paper, scissors, card etc were almost unobtainable for most teachers.

As a result of the seminars, many teachers were interested in further training. 100 of them applied to learn about sketchboarding and 75 asked to be trained to make and use puppets. Six one-week camps have been provisionally organised for next summer.

The trip was both exciting and rewarding, but nonetheless we were glad to get home after nearly a month on the road. And the Mazda van? It survived the journey with only one flat tyre and the loss of half an exhaust pipe!