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

    Well, it took a while, but I had some downtime during my break from education, and I decided to write a book. A novel. Sure, it’s not a book about the nuances of Catholic Anthropology or the nitty-gritty of Hans Urs Von Balthasar or the theological and mystical parallels between Meister Eckhart, Teresa of Avila, D.T. Suzuki, and Thomas Merton. My educational path deviated from that of your run-of-the-mill academic scholar, and I never had a mentor or an advisor who could vouch for me and support me in the way most scholars get their start as writers, but I’ve been thinking over the last few years, and, if the purpose of academic theology is to articulate theological Truths in a way that makes it easier to encounter said Truths, then why not cut to the chase? Why not use the methodology I have been using for the last twenty years to evangelize, disciple, and educate regarding these Truths?      I call it Narrative Theology. Think Flannery O’Conner, a fellow G...

 Last night I had a conversation with my neighbor. She has three kids; one in elementary school, one in middle school, and the last in high school. My neighbor, herself, works as a social worker in schools and in many conversations, while our dogs play with each other, she and I have come back to the topic of mental health in kids today. Her kids vary in their skills as students. The youngest is not interested in school at all, preferring to go outside and play on his own. The middle schooler is an avid reader, but she struggles in the classroom just to keep up. The high schooler is a self-started and typically succeeds in the classroom. Right now, none of them are doing well in school; all of them are suffering from anxiety. Adare, County Limerick, Ireland. I just like this picture because it reminds me of a Beautiful place! Obviously, I worry about the two younger kids. They may have already given up on the classroom component of school even before COVID, but at least they ha...

  It’s been a while. Let’s just say, for the last year, I have been discerning my relationship with Catholic education. I won’t go into the details, but, essentially, I have decided to step away, for the time being. I’m going to start up this blog again, though, and focus on what I know to be the real heart of Catholic education… encounter with Jesus. I have written before, but all education needs to be directed to something greater than just mastery of content knowledge or practical skills. Education must be directed to an encounter with Truth… the Truth of who we are created to be. Ultimately, that is the only knowledge that will fulfill us. Any school that orients students to a material or temporal Truth is setting limits on who the student can be and how much fulfillment or happiness they can experience. Summit Lake, Colorado. I just like this picture. If you can make a connection between this blog and this picture, go for it. (photo. P. Smith) From a Catholic Anthropologic...

We are Not a Private School; we are a Catholic School! What does it mean to be “Catholic”? Ultimately, our vocation as Catholic school teachers is to play a role in the salvation of souls (Can. 1752). If we are not working to that end, then we are not providing for our students what we are called to do. Immaculate Heart of Marcy Catholic Church and School in Atlanta, GA...where I grew up. (Photo: P. Smith) The Church is the “family of the Lord”, so we say. The immediate family, the domestic Church, then, is the womb in which the children of God are cared for and protected in the safest environment possible. So what of the Catholic School? If the domestic Church is the womb of the Church, then the Catholic School is the nursery. And what are we nursing? To what end? God certainly wants everyone to be saved (1 Timothy 2:4-6). But Salvation is not simply “getting into Heaven”. The contrary to salvation is damnation…slavery to sin and fixation on ego and material Truth. ...

I have been out of the loop. It has been several months since I last blogged. I suppose I have been disillusioned. Long story short, I do not feel my philosophy of teaching fits with much of what my current school is doing. At the heart of my philosophy of education (not just theological education, but all of education) is relationship. It is in my methodology and my assessment. It is the anthropology of my students. All humans are made to be in relationship, so it seems logical that the way we learn is heavily connected to relationships. This is especially important in the study of theology, particularly Trinitarian theology. A colleague of mine told me the other day that he asked his students, directly, if they thought education was more about relationships or content. One student answered bluntly that she was not in school to make friends; her goal was to get into Stanford. For her, and for many other students and colleagues, sadly, the focus of education is blind dogmatism and co...

                What is Catholic School Identity? What does it mean when a school puts that little word “Catholic” on their sign or in their mission statement? I have been working on this question for some time now, and, to be honest, I want to keep researching. I want to really dive into the depths of what it means when we say that our schools are Catholic. St. Pius X Catholic High School in Atlanta, Georgia. My alma mater, St. Pius definitely deepened my understanding of Catholicism on an academic level, but I am sure that my relationships with teachers, students, and priests at St. Pius, at least, equally gave me an encounter with Jesus Christ which really sparked my Faith now. But are Catholic schools even more than this? (photo P. Smith)                 I have asked colleagues and contacts around the world what they think an...

“When did you first encounter Jesus?” I didn’t ask it; one of my ninth graders asked it. And she didn’t ask me this question; she asked it to the whole class. Every fifth day or so we play a game; I ask my students to stop taking notes and to stop worrying about tests and grades; they need to just be still with themselves and with each other. Practice sharing and listening. Practice Loving and being Loved by each other. On a basic level, we are making affective that which we have been studying in the vacuum of the classroom. We are practicing the Authentic Self…not just studying it.                 “When did you first encounter Jesus?” she asked the class. It is the question I always wanted to hear in this “game”, but would never ask it myself. It is the one question that has to come from a student for the ensuing conversation to be genuine. All I can do is create the space where they feel free to ask th...

“At the beginning of the year I tell my students that I am not there to convert them or to force them to believe anything in particular. It's True. I am essentially a systematic theologian which means I present everything in a logical and rational manner. I tell students that my goal is for them to leave the class understanding what Catholics believe and why they believe it. If they are a believer, my class bolsters their Faith. If they are not a believer, my class, at least, gives them some knowledge of the reasons and logic behind Catholicism. At the same time, I challenge my students to contemplate what it means to Love and to be Loved, perfectly, and to consider the idea that Jesus Christ is the best way for us to encounter that Love. I listen to their questions and I read their reflections without judgement, but I also guide them to logical conclusions that the Love they seek cannot be found in the material Truth around them. I actually works.” I wrote this message to a ...

                Right now, I am facilitating another online class on teaching in Catholic schools. As a reminder, the class is not about pedagogy or educational theory as much as it is about the rudiments of Catholic Faith. The first question we ask participants to reflect on is how their own Faith life has developed. Essentially, we ask participants to share if they have succeeded in living out their Faith or if there have been struggles. Nearly everyone shares their personal struggles with Faith.                 It is foolish to assume that anyone has a perfect Faith life. Everyone encounters suffering and struggle in their lifetime, and often those struggles make it difficult to believe there is a God who cares for us. But my participants (Catholic school teachers) who recall their early formation in Faith and prayer are the ones wh...

                Long story short; last June, just a few months after I started writing this blog, I was asked to apply for a PhD program in theology, specifically to research and write about an anthropological and dialogical perspective on Catholic pedagogy. I call it a “Theology of Catholic Pedagogical Theory”. I was quickly accepted to the program, but the timing and the funding wasn’t right, so that is on the backburner right now. In the meantime, I am continuing to write this blog (and three others). My Hope is to use this blog as a sort of sounding board or test-kitchen for ideas that, if I do go back to school, I can properly research and fashion into legitimate theology and/or pedagogy. We’ll see. But I am glad I am writing this; just this last weekend I was having dinner with my wife and her parents, and the conversation turned to Artificial Intelligence. My mother-in-law was talking about how within th...

                “It is not my job to make my students hate Henry James the way I hate Henry James.” Dr. Coia, one of my education professors, gave me this advice. I refuse to use my classroom to promote political or personal ideology. I had a student come to me after school, nearly in tears. As she tells the story, she had come from a class where the teacher consistently seemed to vilify students who disagreed with said teacher’s beliefs. If the purpose of Catholic Education is to help students encounter God and to know their Authentic Self, then I cannot think of a more counter-productive way to do this than to denigrate or cut down our students. Instead of beginning with the presupposition that either one or the other of us present in the classroom is right or wrong, why are we not simply teaching our students to be in dialogue with each other? In this particular case, it was a matter of the teacher having to...

If the very nature of God is relationship (Trinity) then the best way to encounter God is within the context of relationship here on Earth. This is most important in Catholic education in the relationships we have with our students. For many of them, they may never have a chance to experience the Love of God outside of the classroom or outside of our regular encounter with them. How important, then, is it for us to be in good relationship with God.                 But this is not simply relationship with other people. Everything that God creates and everything that is a result of His Creation possesses a sacramental nature. The Creator leaves His fingerprint, so to speak, on His Creation. Though we cannot know God directly by observation, we can certainly know of God through His creation. Just as I may have taught my students in an English class, we may never meet the poet, but we can certain come to know o...

                My professional goal this year is to be more reflective. Reflective teaching, as most educators know, is really just the practice of taking a few moments at the end of the day to produce some sort of artifact demonstrating that you have thought about your lessons that day. Many teachers naturally think about what they have taught. For me, that is usually in the car on the way home while I metaphorically kick myself for not having the best comeback to a snarky comment I got from that one student. It isn’t a productive kind of reflection; you might just categorize it as a sort of “decompression” or “venting” exercise. But this year I have made a promise to myself that I would be more productive in my reflection. The result of my goal-setting, as it turns out, has become another tool for my students.                 At the...

“I know a lot of teachers who basically quoted what the Bible or the Catechism said and they thought that would answer all the questions. They may not have been theologically wrong, but usually they were either trying to give a short answer to a sophisticated question or they were just playing the role of authority and just expecting the kids to take what they respond and then never question again. I probably spend about half my time doing damage control for teachers who gave flippant or incomplete answers to difficult questions in the classroom. ...if you are not sure how to answer the question, it is smart to ask someone who may know the material a bit better. In fact, in my experience, students respond well when you take time to answer their questions. If you answer too quickly or flippantly, they may think you aren't taking them seriously. If you get someone to help you answer, it communicates to them that you want to find the best possible answer. That is a sign of Love for ...

“The trick is teaching our students how to see those moments as gifts from God...as invitations from God to be in a relationship with Him. I am firmly convinced that our role as Catholic school teachers is to walk with these kids as they begin to hear and respond to God's call to know Him and to learn what True Love is.” I had a conversation with a coworker the other day about needing time to step away from lesson plans and daily objective and the like. Even if our lessons and objectives address directly the need to cultivate Love in the classroom and to allow for increased dialogue, unless we actually create the space to make that happen, there is no real point to our lessons or objectives. It is one think to learn about cultivating Love; it is another thing to actually do it. I suppose it is similar to the difference between “book learning” and “experiential learning”. We need both. St. John the Baptist Catholic Church in Ballyvaughan, Co. Clare, Ireland. St. John, himself...

“…reflecting on the person and the God Jesus and who He is and what His mission is can benefit us and our students greatly. As teachers, if we understand God to be Lover and Beloved (St. Augustine) then we start realize that our goal is to form our students in that same image...and to form ourselves. I am convinced that our students (and really everyone) needs to know they are eternally Beloved of God. Our students live in a world that is so demanding and so stressful that they never get a chance to reflect on the Love they already experience in life. In many cases, their teachers may be the only ones who can help them to know this. Of course, as they grow in knowledge of their Belovedness, they also grow in their capacity to Love. It is up to us to "be Christ" for them in the classroom, the halls, the gym, the theater, etc...” Day one for my students: Cultivate Love. What does it look like to be in a classroom where everyone knows they are Loved? What effect does that cl...

“Many students (and people, for that matter) feel unloved. I see it every day in the way a teenager is ignored by her peers or made fun of. But if we are made in the image and likeness of God and if God is, as St. Augustine describes, Lover Beloved, and the Love Between the Father and the Son, then every single one of us, as a matter of Justice, must experience the feeling of being Loved. As teachers, we may be the only ones who can offer that sense of Love to ant given student, no matter how small that Love. To be "Christ-like", as you say, is to be that extension of Love for that student. It is a big calling and difficult some days, but this is what we are here to do.” The primary job of Catholic school faculty, staff, volunteers, etc… is to make sure every student knows they are Loved. The root of all injustice in the world is objectification to the point where the human person believes they are unlovable or unloved…even by God. The teacher I was writing to in this r...

Like most schools, my school has a theme for the year. It is a method to create momentum and a continuum of dialogue throughout the year, connecting the beginning, middle, and end. Pretty standard. This year’s theme is: “Opening Doors”. I think it is a fine theme. Not too strange or esoteric. Easy to access and easy to apply to most aspects of my school. For example, I teach at a co-divisional school with about 1700 students. It is one school with a boys division and a girls division; about 70% of the classes are single-gender. So, the idea of “opening doors”, in the metaphorical sense, works well as we try to centralize curriculum and create more dialogue between the two divisions. I particularly like the language that our new principal uses; he describes the process of “opening doors” as “liminal”. In an anthropological sense, “liminal space” describes a sense of disorientation or confusion one experiences as they move from a space characterized as comfortable or predictable to anot...

“If we are made in the image and likeness of God and if God is "community" (Trinity) then there can be no underestimating the importance of developing relationship among and between students, faculty, and staff at a school (and the world). If we want to "look like God", as is our universal Vocation, then this needs to be a daily goal for all who work in the Church, especially in the schools.”  There must be a connection between the anthropological Truth of the human being and how we learn. Education is a “drawing out” of knowledge or Truth from within the student. It is the forming a relationship between new ideas/concepts and already exiting ontological Truths of the students that she or he may not even know. Education is the discovery of the anthropological and substantial Truth of the human being. Any kind of learning that is not working toward this idea is incomplete. Trinitarian Abbey in Adare, Ireland. To think that Jesus had a mother like any other hum...