Gaining Ground for God's Glory at Loreto

It has been an amazing start for Step this academic year at Loreto, with a Year 8 retreat, followed by three different initiatives, all starting within a few weeks of each other.

We kicked off back in September by giving every Year 8 student a copy of our incredible iMatter journal at their retreat. This led to us running our first ever iMatter mentoring sessions with a group of students. The girls we are currently working with were regular member of The Snug when they were in Year 7, so it is great to be able to spend time with them again, but in a more specific way. So far, they have explored the power of gratitude, how to complete a daily pixel diary and more recently we had a discussion around positive and negative thinking. The students are a lively and engaged bunch, with healthy self-esteem already and it is encouraging to know that we are giving them clear and scientifically proven tools and techniques to help them maintain this as they get older. We will continue to offer the six-week iMatter course to other groups of Year 8 students throughout the year.

Secondly, we launched Haven. We have longed to provide this course for those with anxiety at Loreto for some time, so it was amazing to finally be sat with a bunch of Year 11 students every Monday. Claire Banham (pictured above), who created Haven, shares her expertise with the students and now that we are halfway through we are starting to see progress as the students are more comfortable around us and more willing to try out some of the strategies we suggest they use to help them manage their anxiety.

And thirdly, we are now four weeks into our third Leadership Foundation course with a tremendous group of Year 13 students. I confess this is one of my favourite courses to run for so many reasons, but mostly because the students seem to learn so much about themselves. We cover various topics including teamwork, skills and qualities, influence, identity, character, and perseverance and as the weeks go by the students grow more and more confident in who they are and their abilities to lead and influence those around them. Just this week, we ran our fun activity “What lies beneath the hat?” where students chose hats for each other according to the skills and qualities that someone wearing that hat might have. It was beautiful to hear the students explaining why they had chosen certain hats for each other, they spoke such affirming words, but what impressed me most was they were also able to challenge each other to be more confident in their abilities and to speak out more.

And I mustn’t forget, we even have one of our volunteers mentoring three different sixth formers on a fortnightly basis. She loves serving with Step and it is amazing to hear how her relationship with those she is mentoring gets stronger each week. The students are clearly benefitting so much from their one-to-one time with her.

What a privilege it is to serve in Loreto, to see God at work in so many ways, helping us gain ground for His glory. And how blessed is Step that there are so many willing volunteers who help make it all happen? Graeme, Anny, Jane, Claire, and Marion, you are amazing, thank you!

Want to join in the fun? There are many more retreats coming up over the course of the year, and we will be running the Leadership Course again in February, so drop us an email if you feel a Holy Spirit nudge.

Amy