School Visits
Through the work of the School Visits Team, our Synagogue provides an educational resource to the outside world. Our team of volunteers (currently 9 of us) welcome children and their teachers from schools in South London and the southern Home Counties, helping to bring their learning about Judaism in school RE lessons to life and to extend and reinforce their understanding and knowledge. As well as learning about the distinctive features of a synagogue, our visitors will learn some key ideas about Judaism and the Jewish way of life. We are also able to offer schools from further away a video based “virtual” synagogue visit.
Although we are called the School Visits Team, we also host visits by scout and guide groups, university students and adult groups such as police personnel and members of other faith groups. In the past year we have met with almost 2400 people, more than 2100 of whom were children. Almost 1600 of those people actually visited us in person. The others met us through virtual visits or personal visits by one of our team to their schools.
We strongly believe that interfaith learning is of the utmost importance in developing a harmonious world. We hope that by providing the opportunity to talk to Jewish people and learn about ‘living Judaism’, we can help to break down fear and prejudice, and foster understanding and good relations with those parts of the non-Jewish world that our team can reach.
We host visits for children from educational Key Stage 2 (ie from age 7) and above. The team try to match each visit to the age and expectations of the visitors. and adapt the content and presentation to suit the age requirements of the group.
We have a number of freely downloadable teaching resources on a variety of Jewish topics which can be found on this website.( https://www.wimshul.org/education-at-wimbledon-reform-synagogue-in-south-west-london/school-visits/additional-resources-for-teachers/ or from http://icjudaism.org.uk/resources.html).
If you are considering organising a visit, would like to arrange a virtual visit, or simply want to know more, please contact the team by clicking here. Please note that in-person visits to the synagogue normally take place on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday mornings and can only be booked through the synagogue office. You can phone them on 020 8946 4836 (weekdays, between 10 am – 1 pm).