Beth Nolen

Writing Prayer Strategies: A Teacher's Manual came about through both academic study and life experiences. The first sixteen years of my life were spent growing up on a wheat farm in northwestern Victoria. Being surrounded by two thousand acres of farmland and clear blue sky most days, I learnt that the environment pointed to something beyond human control and that the presence of God was revealed by elements such as the dust, the sun and the rain.

To complete my secondary education I attended a Catholic boarding school in Ballarat and I decided that I would like a career in teaching. I deliberately chose not to attend a Catholic College but to attend Melbourne College of Advanced Education. I wanted to be surrounded by people with very different faith and cultural backgrounds, to experience a variety of opinions, beliefs and customs. Strangely enough, it was in this context that I decided in my final year at College that I really did want to teach in a Catholic school! I discovered it was important for me to be able to teach Christian values and beliefs.

Fortunately I found employment at a Catholic school in Ballarat. While I enjoyed teaching immensely I found myself searching for something more. This led me to join the Ballarat Sisters of Mercy and it was during this stage of my life that I had a break from teaching for two years. Through retreats and various programs I discovered many different ways of praying that I had not known as a teacher and I wondered how I could integrate these new skills with classroom life. I also had the opportunity to work for a short time in an Aboriginal community, at a shelter for homeless women and in St. Kilda, working with people who were homeless, or women who were trying to escape the life of prostitution. This time was rich in learning experiences but it also reinforced my belief that wholeness comes from integrating and caring for not only the physical, emotional, social aspects of our beings, but also the spiritual self as well.

I returned to teaching and continued to study, eventually completing a Masters in Education. My minor thesis involved researching what different types of prayer experiences teachers provided for students. One of the findings of my research that shocked me was that over 30% of teachers stated they had no helpful resources for teaching prayer. By this time I had decided that religious life was not where I was called to be permanently, but I found myself working full time in the area of religious education and drawing on all my experiences of prayer and spirituality in my work with students and teachers. Somehow, between my current work as an Education Officer in the Religious Education Centre of the Ballarat diocese and study for a Masters in the Arts, I managed to put the book together. I presently live in Ballarat with my teenage sister, who is completing her secondary education.