Theology of Catholic Pedagogical Theory: What it Means to Teach at a Catholic School

“Creating an environment where students can grow in their Faith can be so tricky in our schools, though. We have so many objectives and agendas that we feel pressured to focus on the academic portion so much. In Catholic Schools (Bl. John Henry Cardinal Newman) we argue that if a student does not know about God and their relationship with God, then all other knowledge is superfluous; what do we do with the knowledge we learn in class if we do not know what God wants of us? In some way, we need to "cultivate Love" in the classroom; that is, we need to create a space where our students' relationship with God can flourish. This will look different for every teacher, but, in my experience, this is what the students remember and benefit from the most.” “Superfluous” may be too strong a word. The knowledge that students gain in the classroom, no matter what knowledge it is, has the potential to expand their understanding of the world and the people around them. As long as t...

“It is amazing what we can learn about each other and each other's family when we just take the time to listen! I am convinced that if we spent more time talking to people about their families and their homes rather than their jobs and their college educations, we would know each other so much more and we would grow closer to each other than we ever thought possible. I try to do the same thing with my students, actually. My students, like most teenagers, get fixated on the surface level of their classmates and never know what is happening in each other's life. I create space and time for them to "cultivate Love" in the classroom. It is a slow process for the younger students, but my juniors and seniors really.” In my junior level class I teach about “the Other”. I explain the concept this way: in sociology, “the Other” is anyone who is not a member of the “mainstream” demographic in a given society. Of course, this term is entirely relative to the culture in which...

The following are excerpts from emails I wrote to a Catholic Education scholar regarding my own reflections and research and what I Hope to study more in the future. “I am looking for a chance to study theology, however the theology that I want to research is of direct benefit to education. Essentially, I am talking about researching exactly  why  Catholic schools exist. I tell theologians that education is an evangelical opportunity, not necessarily in a "common" sense of the word. But education, Catholic education in particular, is an opportunity for students and teachers, alike, to encounter the Truth of God and the Truth of themselves beyond the curriculum. Catholic identity, I believe, has less to do with the narrative of the classroom or the school and more to do with the meta-pedagogy or philosophy of the Catholic school. What I want to do is research this concept and provide materials for "forming" Catholic school teachers not simply to create physical e...

“If I ‘cultivate Love’ in my classroom and create an environment where everyone feels like they are Loved and respected, they soon learn more about each other and in that understanding, they are more free to be who God made them to be. It takes time, but this sort of culture can be replicated in the classroom.” One of my online students was sharing how in their professional development, he and his colleagues consciously thought about how they could “cultivate Love” between them simply by listening and letting each other know that they were cared for. He described the results as “transformative” and “reassuring”. That is, as they began to cultivate Love in their professional development, they began to experience positivity and, for lack of a better term, happiness. The Catholic classroom is not simply a machine that produces students ready for the next level; we do that and we do that well. But the Catholic classroom should also be a place where students encounter their authentic se...

Often we teachers spend all our professional development time working on the nuts and bolts of education. You know, things like backwards design, classroom management, testing, methodology, technology, and any number of other necessary, practical concepts that make education work. As far as education is a science, if all of these components are mastered and balanced across the faculty, the result is a successful school. That is, the result is the production of a student who is prepared to succeed on the next level of education or in the professional world. But as I get older and as I observe the lives of students after they leave my classroom or my school, I am realizing that we are missing something in our professional development. We are missing a unifying philosophy of education that goes beyond the material practices of lesson planning, classroom management, etc…. We need to start thinking of education not only as a science that can be studied, perfected, and replicated, but also...