Letter from the Editor

Lat Blaylock

The REtoday online library: everyone can be a superfan

I met a superfan reader of REtoday magazine once who had kept every copy for nearly thirty years and had a filing and indexing method that reminded her of what was in each issue, as and when she needed it.

The mag has thousands of readers on paper – but as the editor I often find myself referring readers to particular articles or issues we have covered from a while back. Of course, doing my editorial work on the magazine means things stick in my mind. But now we are very pleased to launch a new library service for the magazine that gives you online access to everything from the magazine in an indexed, searchable and accessible format.

Know, grow, do.

We plan each issue of the magazine to carry articles that enable teachers of RE to know more about religions and worldviews, to grow in their professional practice and vision, and to do the business of RE really well in the classroom. Every term this means we have about 30 writers sharing their wisdom, vision or practice. Most of them are classroom teachers, some are academics, and we usually give the front cover to a headline article by someone with a wide public profile. In the library, you will find thinking from some great characters: Derren Brown, Al Murray, Sara Pascoe, Robert Winston, Shami Charabarti, Brian Cox, Yusuf Islam (the former Cat Stevens), Sameera Ahmed, Stormzy and YolanDa Brown have all given us great stuff. But it is interesting that our reader feedback usually prizes even more highly the classroom-close articles we run on ‘ten ideas for displays, for homework, for links to literacy, for films to use in RE, for SEND RE, for … well, many more like that.

Help yourself

The work we’ve done to digitise this huge library of back issues of RE Today is worth your attention, I hope. It makes is really easy to find the thoughtful, inspiring and provocative article you can half remember. We’re glad to offer all this professional insight to teachers of RE. Join in, help yourself to better RE.

Lat Blaylock, Editor, REtoday