A Book for Life
Welcome to MJR 24/7 – a unique pastoral care resource for junior secondary students that complements your existing RE curriculum.
MJR 24/7 is an invaluable guide to help young people journey through their challenging adolescent years and into adulthood.
Created with a view to helping students and staff establish their Catholic Identity, MJR 24/7 not only provides meaningful, relevant and challenging topics to those students who have a strong faith-filled connection to Jesus, but also supports those with little understanding of Jesus and his message.
MJR 24/7 has been tailored to engage students, via relevant issues, to think deeply, reflect, and develop a relationship with themselves, their peers, teachers, parents and their world. It has been trialled across Australia with positive feedback from both teachers and students.
MJR 24/7 encourages students to turn to the Gospel to foster a relationship with themselves, family, friends, others and Jesus … to be the best they can be. It is truly a book for life.
Having used the Make Jesus Real (MJR) book written by Peter Mitchell for Grade 5 and 6 for a number of years, I often encountered secondary teachers and students and, especially parents, who asked me ‘Why isn’t the MJR philosophy continued into secondary school?’ I felt that teachers and students in secondary schools would greatly benefit from a resource that recognised teenage issues and looked at these from a perspective of pastoral care and faith-filled philosophies.
In a nutshell, the purpose of writing and developing this resource was to give the teachers and students the opportunity to talk – yes, to actually have dialogue and then, to reflect – even if options differ. After consultation with students, they really wanted to have an opportunity to express their thoughts, feelings and reactions to the unit content by writing a journal. This is, perhaps, the aspect of the book that I anticipate and hope will be most valuable to them in the years to come.
As Dean of Mission and Catholic Identity – and daily in my role as a leader and classroom teacher – the recognised need for adolescents to have the opportunity to use faith-filled approaches when grappling with pastoral care issues that are relevant to their lives.
My role as a Religious Education specialist, with a strong passion for pastoral care in Catholic schools, ensures that I lead by example in MJR 24/7. My experience in teaching at Catholic schools in Western Australia and my passion for 21st century learning has shaped my contemporary teaching approach. I focus on making Jesus real and relevant for the students, for which the MJR 24/7 resource is perfect as a supplementary resource to our RE curriculum and pastoral care offerings.
For more extensive testimonials on Make Jesus Real, including how people implement it in their schools click on these words!
Make Jesus Real – a book originally written by Peter ‘Mitch’ Mitchell – aims to help students in Years 5 and 6 gain, and maintain, a positive attitude to life through the values that Jesus taught us. This book eventually became a program of three books, for all years of primary teaching, which has been adopted by thousands of teachers and tens of thousands of students around Australia.