The power of assemblies
- pjohn4
- Apr 3, 2024
- 3 min read
Public speaking is a skill. It's a skill that I list as one of my strengths. This probably stems from my drama and performance background, where I feel comfortable on a stage with an audience. While it might terrify some people with all those faces looking at you, I have always focussed on the one imaginary person in the back and I speak to them.
In my job, I've been very lucky to have school assemblies as a platform. Assemblies provide and opportunity to come together as a community; a time to celebrate traditions, successes and special occasions. Each school has a set of values and traditions that it tries to impart and assemblies provide an echo chamber for these values. The curriculum is packed with content, leaving little room to deviate from the syllabus. Assemblies bring everyone together to focus on one thing, in a way that showcases the identity of the school. They can communicate more than a collection of announcements.
For many school leaders, assemblies are seen as a problem: the logistics of getting a large group of students into a hall, the settling them down and 'shushing' from teachers at the side. Many begrudge the time taken to write an assembly, all of which these days come with an accompanying PowerPoint or Ted Talk, which is a video of someone else giving an assembly to grown ups.
I always saw assemblies as an opportunity to get students to think about something that would otherwise pass them by. I'm not a fan of making assemblies relevant by attaching them to a National Day or Week or Month, unless there's a genuine point that you feel that you need to communicate that is getting lost or forgotten. I will blow my own trumpet by saying that staff and students regular came up to me after one of my assemblies to tell me that they really enjoyed it. Some even remind me of an assembly I gave months later. That's because I usually try to address something that they weren't expecting and challenge them to think.
Assemblies can be popular. I notice a lot of nostalgia cropping up in various podcasts for school assemblies, particularly towards songs that schools used to sing. My personal favourite were All Things Bright And Beautiful, He's Got The Whole World In His Hands and the one about Peter going fishing.
My primary school had large suspended hymnals that lucky students were able to pull down and change which song was being sung. Always a great honour. Singing in assembly appears to be a rarity in secondary schools. As much as people hated doing it as teenagers, they get all excited 20 years later when they get all nostalgic for the tunes. We were fortunate in my secondary school to perform a version of the Rock Messiah, so we sang 'Worthy Is The Lamb' with electric guitar accompaniment, and we sang "Come For Tea" instead of 'Comfort Ye' which made us chuckle every time.
We used to regularly sing in assembly in the first school I taught. Being the RE teacher, I was often asked to lead the collective worship. Conscious that the Year 9s and 10s would be reluctant to sing, I made the theme of the Key Stage 4 assembly about 'peer pressure' and how we often shy away from doing things because we worry what people think. I got them all to sing "If I were a butterfly" which has the line "If I was a fuzzy-wuzzy bear, I'd thank the Lord for my fuzzy-wuzzy hair". They left the hall smiling, glad they'd been given the chance to do it.
The best assemblies are engaging because they challenge people (staff as well as students). They are a lesson on a grander scale. Like my lessons, I have learning objectives - what do I want people to leave with? A great assembly also has a little 'easter egg' or a little 'nugget' - a piece of information that they can take with them that they are itching to share with other people. It just takes one person, or a handful of people, to go home and tell it their family and that surprising fact generates further discussion and insight. That becomes a memorable assembly.
In the upcoming blogs, I am going to share some of my best assemblies in an 'Assembly Special'. Many of the PowerPoints that accompany the assemblies are available in the TES Resources Shop
Comments