Reflection and Accompaniment Were Key in the Second Quarter of 2020

Par Educate Magis
Août 18th, 2020

During the second quarter of 2020 our school communities were constantly challenged on many different levels and in ways we couldn’t have imagined earlier this year, but these challenges also provided unique opportunities for renewal, creativity and reflection. As a global community we have grown stronger and therefore so too have our possibilities of working together across countries and continents. Thank you all for your continuous sharing and exchanging of resources, ideas, projects, reflections and most of all for your accompaniment, community spirit and sharing of hope.

There is a light at the end of the tunnel. This is a phrase that we have been hearing a lot lately, mostly as a hopeful reminder or even as assurance that even though uncertainty remains today, someday the pandemic will be over and our Jesuit school communities around the world will come back to fully enjoy the lively energy of school life. St. Ignatius told us to “Laugh and grow strong” and, in a way, this is what faculty, staff and parents have been doing for the past months, growing strong encouraging and accompanying reflective thinking and learning amongst themselves and their children/students in an effort to keep their spirits up as they experience the digital world in a new way.

One great example of this accompaniment was “On Earth as it is in Heaven” a Global Ignatian Retreat experience held from the 18th to the 21st of May, organized by the Educate Magis team and facilitated by Fr. Casey Beaumier SJ, Director at the Institute for Advanced Jesuit Studies at Boston College, and Fr. Patrick Nolan SJ, Assistant Director of Enrollment and Chaplain to Athletics at Boston College High School, both in the United States. Hundreds of educators from different Jesuit schools around the world attended thisvirtual spiritual event to participate in a global experience of the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius of Loyola via live presentations, personal reflection and group sharing.

Educators from our global community also joined Irish Jesuit, Brendan McManus SJ, a former teacher who has written widely on Ignatian spirituality and mental health in the Webinar, “Cura Personalis in the Crisis – How Can We Take Care of Ourselves and Our Students?”, which offered Ignatian tips for teachers adapting to the Covid-19 crisis. Based on the Spiritual Exercises, he explained how self-care is fundamental to being able to teach well in the crisis and how we can better take care of our students. This global virtual gathering was a reminder that in order to accompany students in a meaningful and sustainable way, we all need to take care of ourselves first.

Our students also had the opportunity to express themselves and to reflect together by sharing their stories as part of the global project “A Day in My life Living Under Covid-19”. Many Jesuit schools around the world shared their students’ reflections and thousands of students, parents and teachers visited the Educate Magis platform to read these deep, heartfelt and in some cases also lighthearted  stories and reflections.

Apart from virtual reflections, faculty and staff downloaded many of the resources available on the Educate Magis platform. Here are some of the resources most downloaded by our members during the second quarter of 2020, which you might find useful or interesting to use during the next school term.