Dream: to think strategically and with vision about our work in schools.
Develop: to consider different skills we need to grow for our work in schools.
Do: a resource idea related to this theme that you can take and use in your work.
Each month we will link you to downloads and continued reading at schoolswork.co.uk
Dream
Greek philosopher Aristotle claimed there were three types of friendship:
Utility
Aristotle describes ‘utility’ friendship as shallow, easily dissolved and existing for a specific purpose. For example, you may have a friendship with a hairdresser, but one day you find a cheaper hairdresser and go there instead and the friendship would most likely dissolve. This type of friendship has weak bonds and would just remain while both people derive some benefit from each other.
Pleasure
The second is friendship based on pleasure, where both people are drawn to pleasant qualities in the other that bring them pleasure – for example a shared hobby, good looks or wit. This type of friendship is built on changing passions and stops when it doesn’t feel good or no longer brings pleasure.
Virtue
This is Aristotle’s highest form of friendship. It is based on a person wanting the best for their friends, regardless of utility or pleasure. It is long-lasting and tough to obtain because it takes work to have a virtuous friendship and usually involves sacrifice. People in virtuous friendships must be able to value loving over being loved, and as such, their relationship will be based more around loving the other person and wanting what is good for them.
February is a month where relationships can become the focus of our attention. Rather than considering just romantic relationships on the 14th February, perhaps take this month to look at all of your friendships and relationships. In relation to your work, it might be good to consider what connections you are making and what categories they may fit into, according to Aristotle.
Develop
This month we challenge you to evaluate where your support comes from and to ask how you can better place yourself to both receive support and challenge but also give it to others: to invest in virtuous friendships. Working in schools as a Christian visitor can be a lonely place, even if you are working with a team, and in this month of focusing on relationships, how about taking the temperature of your working relationships? We work best when we feel connected to the purpose of what we are doing, and when there are other people we are journeying with towards that purpose. It could be for you that ‘team’ is not about the people you work with every day, but those you meet up with for accountability or support, or share your hopes and dreams with.
Do you know someone who could do with some encouragement this month? As much as you may be feeling the need for development and support, it could be that you find what you need when you reach out to invest in others.
Do
You could use the following ideas in small group work to help students consider what a good, or virtuous, friendship looks like. The ideas on this page can also be adapted for an assembly on friendship.
Question
What if friendship, or any relationship, is not about what you can get but what you can give? Ask the students if they can think of any great examples of friendship, either from those they know personally, or from stories they have read about or seen online or on TV.
Story
Sue Norton lives in Arkansas City, Kansas. She received a phone call in January 1990 with the news that her father and his wife had been murdered: shot to death in their farmhouse. Sue described feeling ‘numb’ and confused as to why someone would harm them – they had little money and the killer got away with just $17 and an old truck. The loss of her father broke Sue’s heart.
Sue sat through the trial of her father’s killer (Robert Knighton). She was confused about how she was feeling. Everyone around her was consumed with hate and they assumed she would be the same. But she couldn’t harbour those feelings and she prayed to God to help her. Sue couldn’t sleep one night; she lay awake praying about these things and when the morning came, she had this thought, ‘Sue, you don’t have to hate him, you could forgive him.’ So the next day, she got permission to visit Robert Knighton in his cell while the jury was deliberating their verdict. She said to him, ‘I don’t hate you, if you are guilty, I forgive you.’
Knighton was convicted of murder and got put on death row (he was put to death in 2006), but Sue often wrote to him and visited him occasionally. She became friends with him and because of her actions and forgiveness, he found himself a changed man by the time he died. Sue stated that some good had come of her father’s death.
Jesus said: ‘If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? Anyone can do that. Love your enemies, do good to them, and lend to them without expecting to get anything back.’
Activity
On the friendship grid available for download on schoolswork.co.uk, students can fill out the following four quadrants of the page (you will need to explain these types of friendship to the students – some help is provided on the download). They can write or draw in the boxes:
Functional – identify a friendship they have that is based on utility.
Feeling good – identify a relationship they have based on pleasure or a shared hobby.
Virtuous – identify one or more virtuous friendship(s) and what they appreciate about those friends. If they cannot think of any, ask them to write in this square the type of friend they would like to have.
Who I want to be – in this square, ask the students to think about themselves. Ask what type of friend they would like to be to others. If you are working with students who struggle to make friends, it can help for them to imagine the type of friend they would like, and then to be that person for others.
This month’s schools work page was bought to you by Romance Academy and schoolsworkUK, projects of Youthscape.
