Which Way Are We Heading?
The journey of life
by Helen Bryant (revised, originally published in 2014)
Suitable for Whole School (Sec)
Aims
To consider the direction that we are taking in life.
Preparation and materials
- Optional: if you come to work by bicycle, you could ride it into the assembly!
Assembly
- Ask the students, ‘How did you come to school today?’
Tell the students how you got to school, whether it was on foot, by bike, by car or by public transport.
Explain that now that spring is approaching, and the weather is getting warmer, we may be considering alternative ways of getting to school. - Ask the students, ‘If you came to school on foot or by public transport, were you doing anything else at the same time?’
Suggest that many of us were probably on our phones, but we might have been practising our French vocab, listening to music or gazing at our surroundings. - Point out that there are times when it’s OK for our minds to wander.
Tell the students that your mind wandered this morning, and led you to think something like this:
‘I was thinking about where everyone else was heading on their morning journey. How were they feeling? Had they had a decent night’s sleep, or had they been kept awake, worrying about things? Were they thinking about what they had to do in the day ahead or were they just concentrating on getting to their destination?’ - Explain that our daily journeys can teach us some important lessons about moving through life.
When we cycle, we sometimes overtake vehicles that catch up with us again later. Alternatively, we might travel behind a cyclist all the way into town, or the cyclist might turn off at traffic lights or go down another road.
Life is a bit like a journey into school or work except that, most of the time, when we are travelling to school or work, at least we know where we are going! Life is rarely as straightforward as that. None of us know exactly where we are going or what will happen in our lives. We may well start down one road and discover that we have to backtrack and find another route. - When vehicles and pedestrians encounter traffic lights, they must stop when the light is red. The red light is there to make us pause and enable other traffic to pass. Sometimes, pausing is helpful for clearing our thoughts and enabling us to re-evaluate our situation.
When we feel like things have gone wrong, or we’ve hit a dead end in life, it’s important to remember that those moments of waiting give us a chance to be still and reflect on what is ahead. If we don’t stop, but carry on regardless, we may well hit something. - We can also learn something from crossroads and junctions. In our lives, we have moments when we reach a crossroad or junction. We have certain choices to make that will determine the direction of the next part of our lives. For example, Year 9 students will be choosing what they will study at GCSE. Likewise, those of us who are facing important exams have a choice: we can knuckle down and work hard to achieve our best grades, or we can take our foot off the gas and not try as hard as we could have. Those of us choosing which university to go to will also be facing a crossroads that could change the course of our lives.
Time for reflection
Remind the students that crossroads in life can be scary. When we are travelling to school, we know which way to turn and what our final destination is. However, sometimes in life, we get things wrong and end up lost! It’s important to remember that if we take a wrong turning and make mistakes, there is always a way back. We don’t know what lies down most of the turnings and crossroads in life, but the experiences help us to learn a lot about ourselves, especially with regard to our resilience and fortitude.
Encourage the students to take time to think about their journeys through life.
Pause to allow time for thought.
Is it time to re-evaluate what we are doing, how hard we are working and how our behaviour is affecting our own lives and those of others?
Pause to allow time for thought.
Encourage the students to talk to someone if they feel worried, or need help or a change of direction.
Song/music
‘Circle of life’ from the film The Lion King, available at: https://youtu.be/IwH9YvhPN7c (4.56 minutes long)
