A Powerful, Reflective and Action Oriented Webinar for Jesuits Schools Around the World

On May 14th, 2020 the global community of Educate Magis gathered online to participate in the Webinar “What would St. Ignatius do? Taking Jesuit Education to the Covid Frontier”.  Educators from Jesuit schools from various backgrounds and contexts around the world listened and reflected on what questions they should be asking themselves while planning for a comprehensive strategy for managing students, technology and instructional design as we look to the coming months and next academic year.

The presenters, Jen LaMaster, Assistant Principal, and JD Ferries-Rowe, Chief Information Officer at Brebeuf Jesuit school in the United States, started by acknowledging the 6 stages of COVID-19 grief for educators and invited the audience to use their self reflection handout to plan for continuous learning opportunities. As the webinar continued, the participants had a chance to reflect on recent months and shared the challenges that they have been facing and that are of immediate concern. Words like: adapting, resilience, health, attendance, connection, accompany, transition, confusion, lack of Cura Personalis, and many more filled the chat box.

Later, Jen and JD explained the hierarchy of online learning and shared the resource “4-square reflection” as a quick tip to put this into practice. They also dived into a deep analysis of synchronous and asynchronous learning versus class time and homework. Other topics covered were office hours and virtual support, health and safety, hybrid split classroom scenarios and more.

Overall the Webinar gave the attendees great tips and ideas as Jesuit schools continue to cope with the transition to remote instruction. Accompanying young people in the creation of a hope-filled future has taken on a new immediacy, therefore, planning a comprehensive strategy as we look to the coming academic year has a different feel. Even though Jesuit schools around the world have to answer to different challenges within different contexts, the schools’ shared foundations of Cura Personalis, Jesuit pedagogy, and our call to the frontiers meant this webinar was also a wonderful example of how powerful global community support, reflection and sharing and learning is. These are unique characteristics of our global network of Jesuit and Ignatian schools.

We would like to share some of the comments that were mentioned by some educators and addressed during the webinar. We had educators connecting from schools in Philippines, Argentina, United States, Chile, India, Nepal, Zambia, Mexico, Italy, France, Guatemala, Malta, Tanzania, Spain, Uruguay, Portugal, Brazil, Poland, United Kingdom, Ireland, Myanmar and many others.

We invite you to watch the webinar recording and to comment in the comment box below. If you have further questions for Jen and JD please also leave them in the comment box below.

“How will you conduct your spiritual formation (retreat/recollection)? Do you have online tools for this?”
“Any tips on conducting spiritual formation remotely, considering inequality of access to resources such as the internet?”
“We have a Student mobility program but right now we are thinking of moving to a virtual Student mobility to work a citizenship program”
“We’ll be very busy preparing with regards to health & safety”
“How to carry on the lessons of in person social justice experiences without community service and immersion experiences.”
“How are you engaging parents now and what plans do you have for the next year to involve them and address their questions?”
“Any thoughts/plans to setup programs to address staff mental and emotional health? If we’re not well, can we best support our students?”

“Many thanks for this exceptional opportunity…. the shared and diverse perspectives have been enriching.”
“Thanks for your time today. Great to hear feedback and see so many colleagues tuned in across the JSN gracias a EducateMagis!”
“Thank you so much for sharing your insights and experience so generously! God bless and protect you all”
“Thank you Jen and JD. Hope this kind of webinar continues in the days to come.”
“Great to be connected together to our international community”

“Thank you! This was so clarifying. And knowing we’re not alone all over the world!”

The Global Ignatian webinar “What would St. Ignatius do? Taking Jesuit Education to the Covid Frontier” was organized by Educate Magis together with Jen LaMaster, Assistant Principal, and JD Ferries-Rowe, Chief Information Officer at Brebeuf Jesuit school in the United States.  If you would like to attend more webinars like this one or have a particular topic that you would like us to develop for a future webinar please send us an email at info@educatemagis.org