As we make our way through this summer, and continue to address the intersection of the COVID-19 pandemic and systemic racial injustice, I invite all of us in the SCS community to take a reflective pause and ask: what are we about as a Jesuit institution of higher learning? What is distinctive about our mission and values as a Jesuit school and how can this history and perspective inform how we proceed through these difficult times?
Georgetown’s Charlene Brown-McKenzie, Director of the Center for Multicultural Equity & Access, says that Jesuit education is defined by innovation and critical inquiry. What is your experience of Georgetown as a Jesuit institution of higher learning?
Each of us likely has our own viewpoint on what it means to learn and work at a Jesuit institution–some are deeply motivated and inspired by this tradition and it is the reason we choose to be part of Georgetown, while others might not reflect about what the university’s mission and values mean to us. Regardless of how one engages with our Jesuit heritage, however, we each have the opportunity to be inspired or challenged by this heritage in a way that deeply animates our time at Georgetown. Each of us is invited to make our Georgetown experience more meaningful and more impactful by journeying with the tools and resources made available by our Jesuit heritage.
The Association of Jesuit Colleges and Universities (AJCU) represents the network of 27 Jesuit schools in the United States. Outside of the U.S. there are over 180 Jesuit institutions of higher learning. Jesuit schools provide a deep network of connections.
This week, the Association of Jesuit Colleges and Universities (AJCU), an umbrella organization that represents the 27 Jesuit institutions of higher education in the U.S., marked its 50-year anniversary as a body. AJCU produced this short video to reflect on its first half-century of work and ponder what the next 50 years will look like in American Jesuit higher education. There is much to say about the characteristics of Jesuit education in terms of pedagogy, structure, inspiration, and application, but I would like to focus on two ideas in the video and invite you to reflect on them.
First, Charlene Brown-McKenzie, Georgetown’s Director of the Center for Multicultural Equity & Access and a student in the Doctor of Liberal Studies program, celebrates Jesuit education’s commitment to critical reflection. Charlene says in the video: “Jesuit history comes out of being innovators, progressive in so many ways, anchored in this critical question of inquiry and discourse.” Later on, Christopher Kerr, Executive Director of the Ignatian Solidarity Network, states: “We [in Jesuit higher education] see everything as inter-connected, a very-holistic model of working for justice. What are the connections to economic justice? What are the connections to racial injustice and inequity in our society?”
Blending together these two themes of critical inquiry and inter-connection, I invite you to consider this question for reflection: in your work and study at Georgetown, in the midst of intersecting pandemics of COVID-19 and systemic racial injustice, what topics or issues of concern are leading you into deeper reflection about how to act justly in the world as a professional?
Second, the AJCU video presents Ignatian discernment as a critical tool for proceeding in these times to meet our local, national, and global challenges. We’ve highlighted the Jesuit examen of consciousness before, and how this form of structured daily reflection helps us make sense of our feelings and grow in deeper awareness of how we are called to act in the world. Kerr addresses the relationship between justice and discernment when he says: “[Jesuit higher education] is going to be seeking to be on the frontiers of our world, where we find the greatest need, find people who are most vulnerable.” Linking discernment and justice in this way makes clear how important it is to maintain a regular interior practice of meditation, mindfulness, and/or prayer. We might ponder this question:
How are you practicing regular discernment? And how is your discernment and reflection these days informing how you are called to meet the world’s greatest needs and the needs of the most vulnerable in our society?
I invite you to take some time reflecting on these questions and exploring how the university’s Jesuit mission and values may help you deepen your experience at Georgetown. Please reach out to me, Jamie Kralovec, SCS Associate Director for Mission Integration (pjk34@georgetown.edu), if you have questions or suggestions about how our university mission and values can more fully meet the challenges of this moment.
Since 2016, the School of Continuing Studies has annually offered degree-seeking students in the Master of Professional Studies and Liberal Studies programs a unique course opportunity to deeply engage with both their own personal values and the values that animate the mission of Georgetown University. The course, “Jesuit Values in Professional Practice,” has become a popular offering among SCS students and satisfies degree plans as a free elective.
MPS-Human Resources alum Rashada Jenkins speaking in past offering of the “Jesuit Values in Professional Practice” course. The course will be offered for the fifth this fall semester in a remote format.
With the help of Georgetown’s Center for Social Justice Research, Teaching & Service, the class is designed as Community-Based Learning (CBL) so that students take on direct work with a community-based organization addressing identified needs of marginalized persons and communities in the DC area. This community service outside of the classroom provides students with data for ongoing individual and group reflections that sustain the 15-week course.
Diverse learning activities in the class include presentations by officials responsible for advancing Jesuit mission and values in their work at Georgetown and beyond, regular individual and group reflection, and learning materials that make the Jesuits’ 500-year old tradition come alive for contemporary professionals. The class is open to and welcomes students of all faith traditions or no faith tradition at all, utilizing a “whole person” approach to education that considers the intellectual, professional, moral, and spiritual aspects of human development.
As “Jesuit Values in Professional Practice” enters its fifth fall semester, the course will be delivered this year in a remote format. The CBL requirement will also become virtual for students, who can serve in community-based organizations with opportunities for such virtual service coordinated by the Center for Social Justice (an example of how the CSJ has already promoted these remote service possibilities for students can be found here and here). We can embrace and adapt to virtual forms of teaching and learning consistent with the spirit of a “community in dispersion,” a concept that arises out of the early Jesuits’ history of “remaining intimately connected through the technology” of the day in spite of their own disruptions and separations.
Fr. Matthew Carnes S.J., associate professor in Georgetown’s Department of Government and Walsh School of Foreign Service and past presenter in the SCS course, describes more fully the uniquely Jesuit contribution to the motif of a “community in dispersion” here.
Photograph of Bishop Mark Seitz of the Diocese of El Paso participating in a Black Lives Matter protest. The SCS Jesuit Values course explores pressing issues of social justice and invites students to develop a plan of action to serve justice and the common good in their professional lives.
Given the social challenges facing our communities at the intersection of the COVID-19 pandemic and systemic racial injustice, the course’s objective to help students “identify ways to serve justice and the common good in both a professional and personal context” is particularly relevant today. I have found that students tend to enjoy the class because of the extended opportunity it provides for guided and structured discernment about developing one’s personal mission and values as a professional. I have also found that students at SCS enjoy the interdisciplinary nature of the learning and the occasion for engaging with students outside of their professional disciplines and degree programs.
More than any advertisement, perspectives from course alumni testify to the curricular value. Here is a sampling of what past students have had to say about the class:
“I finally understand what makes Jesuit spirituality unique. It is a spirituality that is externalized, that actively shapes one’s choices and actions, it is contemplation in action, being people for others and aspiring for the Magis (the more).”
“The speakers who moved me the most had journeyed deeply inside their humanity and touched mine.”
“CBL truly opened my eyes to the ways people dedicate their time to fight for justice everyday. I enjoyed serving those in need and getting to know them and their stories. It was an experience that I will carry on into my own work and life.”
“I learned the foundational aspects of Jesuit values and caring for the whole person. In working to develop a right relationship with all, I learned much about Jesuit spirituality in practice and about the process of accompanying, serving, reflecting on data, researching, communicating and raising awareness in order to transform the life of another, one person at a time.”
Degree-seeking students with questions about “LSHV 480: CBL Jesuit Values in Professional Practice” (CRN: 31553, meets Thursdays at 5:20 pm in the fall) should reach out to course instructor and Associate Director for Mission Integration, Jamie Kralovec (pjk34@georgetown.edu).
In last week’s post, I noted that there are many prongs in the racial justice movement. Concrete action for change, and not just “talk,” must be the priority of the work. In order to make that shared action possible, however, it is important to recognize the ways in which racism consciously and unconsciously shapes social structures and informs how white people understand and relate to Black people and other people of color. The long-haul work of dismantling racist structures demands a recognition of Black voices and experience that the dominant narratives in our shared spaces too often de-center and ignore. Raising consciousness and awareness about Black voices and stories is an important component of racial justice.
This week I want to highlight four examples at Georgetown in which the university has utilized its digital platforms to promote the work of racial justice by highlighting and honoring the reality of Black experience.
Georgetown SCS has been lifting up the voices of Black students and alumni through a series of Instagram Stories. Check them out at this link: https://www.instagram.com/georgetownscs/
First, SCS leveraged its effectiveness with social media by inviting Black students and alumni to share their reflections about racial injustice in a series of Instagram Stories, including Instagram Takeovers (You can access the stories here). These Instagram Stories amplify the voices of SCS students and alumni who are powerfully using their professional roles to advocate for justice and empowerment of people of color. In one Instagram story, Lauren Strayhorn, an alumna of the Master of Professional Studies in Integrated Marketing Communications, who works in digital marketing for Deloitte, reflects on how a Georgetown education prepared her to commit to creating authentic spaces for Black women through a digital newsletter that she created:
“It is important to be in spaces and places that encourage authenticity and uphold similar values and traditions that I honor and cherish where I can be who I am as I am. The Jesuit value of Educating the Whole Person embraces an understanding of one’s experience within and outside the classroom environment … I didn’t see myself in the news that I was reading and I created Notedd (a digital newsletter offering perspectives of ambitious women of color) for those who were also struggling.”
Second, Georgetown organized this week an “Interfaith Prayer for Lament, Healing, & Justice” in Dahlgren Chapel. With chaplains and staff participating from the many faith traditions represented at Georgetown, along with President DeGioia, the solemn gathering affirmed the university’s commitment to Contemplation in Action. Prayers offered up from across the religious traditions pointed to the need for sustained action to realize a racially just community. Reverend Ebony Grisom, Protestant Chaplain, prophetically noted that the tradition of lamentation precedes truth-telling and authenticity. Reverend Grisom called this community to bring about an alternate future where anti-Black violence no longer steals God’s Glory: “We lament the world as it is and long for what it should be.”
Third, Georgetown launched “Georgetown Community Continues Quest for Racial Justice,” a centralized page highlighting the many ways, through teaching, research, artistic expression, advocacy, and activism, that “members of the Georgetown community seek racial justice.” Hopefully this site can serve as a platform for Georgetown students, staff, and faculty to research and learn about how people of color are negatively impacted by racism embedded in intersecting social structures, like housing, education, and health.
And finally, Georgetown University’s president announced yesterday that the University will officially observe June 19, 2020—Juneteenth—as an official University holiday this year, and annually. This recognition is a long time coming and is an important day to honor the millions of African people who were enslaved, and to acknowledge and reflect on the full promise of freedom. We must continue to work collectively to address the implications of enslavement and segregation that are still present today to ensure a more just future.
If you are looking for ways to practice racial justice consciousness in the ways you engage with social media, here are some resources to consider:
National Museum of African-American History & Culture presents tools and guidance for Talking About Race;
For parents looking to educate children through a Critical Race Lens, The Conscious Kid offers some Black and Brown owned books; and
Last week’s reflection focused on the ways that Georgetown’s religious traditions have responded to the cries for racial justice in our institution, our local communities, and our larger society. The task of building a racially just and equitable community is long-haul work and, as noted last week, begins in the interior. Recognizing that education is one component of racial justice work and that interior practices are at the root of the struggle to dismantle unjust structures, I would like to highlight this week a particularly helpful resource for cultivating an inner life that this struggle for justice requires.
Rhonda Magee, a law professor at the University of San Francisco, offers mindfulness practice as a way of doing the inner work of racial justice.
The “Inner Work of Racial Justice” by Professor Rhonda Magee offers an inspiring yet challenging framework for how embodied mindfulness can address the patterns of conflict and division that enable racial injustice. Recognizing a diverse tradition of mindfulness practice, Magee defines mindfulness as “paying attention to life as it unfolds, grounded in the body and breath, and allowing that awareness to settle the mind, increase presence and consciousness of interconnectedness with others.” In her book, Professor Magee, a law professor at the University of San Francisco, a peer Jesuit institution, invites her readers, regardless of how they identify or choose not to, to deeply engage with how race and racism shapes all of us. Magee speaks both to white allies and persons of color about the transformative potential of mindfulness practices. The book flows in five parts: Grounding, Seeing, Being, Doing, and Liberating, a pattern that closely resembles a Jesuit spirituality framework of moving from experience to reflection and from reflection to action for justice.
For white allies, mindfulness is especially needed to grow in deeper inner recognition of the unconscious bias towards people of color that manifests in thoughts, feelings, and inner sensations. For people of color, who have suffered from explicit racism and the pernicious effects of unconscious bias permeating our social structures, mindfulness can become a form of healing, showing “how to slow down and reflect on microaggressions – to hold them with some objectivity and distance – rather than bury unpleasant experiences so they have a cumulative effect over time.” Magee’s perspective is ultimately hopeful, noting that mindfulness meditation can both “tame and clarify” a troubled mind while also opening the possibility that we can “transform the world.”
Professor Magee presented on her book at Georgetown in February 2020, inviting deeper reflection on the interior and exterior work necessary for realizing racial justice.
In February 2020, Georgetown invited Professor Magee to offer a Race and Higher Education presentationas part of Social Justice Week and the MLK: Let Freedom Ring! Initiative of the Office of the President. The presentation, “Doing the Inner Work of Racial Justice: Principles, Practices (and Prayers!) for Healing Ourselves and Transforming the World,” offered many insights about the unique challenges of doing racial justice in a predominantly white institution of higher learning. As I noted last week, waking up to racism is especially uncomfortable when white privilege remains a barrier to meaningful social change for racial justice. But Professor Magee notes that this transformation for justice ultimately depends on a self-compassion that leads to greater joy:
“As by now you have no doubt come to see, this work is not for the faint of heart. We are working to heal ourselves, yes. At the same time we are working to disrupt, deconstruct, and break open patterns that make normal and “okay” the suffering of people at the margins of our lives. And we are working to build a new world –one that actually inclines toward the liberation of all, rather than toward our greater but more subtle enslavement. Because all that we do is subject to change and is impermanent, we are seeking to develop the capacity to do what we can with a lightness and joy that keep us from taking ourselves too seriously and, at the same time, illuminate the dire necessity of continuing to do our loving best even in the face of some defeat. Let’s get to work.“
George Floyd cried out for breath as his innocent life was extinguished. His death by the knee of a white police officer shines a light on the persisting evil of racism in America. A global movement spurred by Floyd’s murder, and the murders of Breonna Taylor and Ahmaud Arbery, among many others, has raised greater consciousness about systemic racism in the United States and the potential for sustaining meaningful social and political action to dismantle unjust racist structures. Countless other Black lives have also been lost in recent years to police violence but have not led to a national movement rising up like the one we are witnessing today.
The energy for social change on display in this moment is a reason for hope but I must also acknowledge that racial violence, and the conscious and the unconscious ways that racism and anti-Blackness manifest in daily life, is a reality that white people like me have the privilege to ignore or choose not to see. And as a white Catholic, I also have to acknowledge the ways that my church has too often been silent when issues of racial justice demanded action, not only in our sacred spaces but also in our society.
Georgetown chaplains, like Imam Yahya Hendi, Reverend Ebony Grisom, and Rabbi Rachel Gartner, have reflected on racial injustice in recent messages. What do our religious traditions offer us in this time of mourning and unrest?
After a week of listening to my colleagues, I can affirm that feelings of loss, anger, and vulnerability are pervasive in our community. In the midst of such acute hopelessness, fragility, and despair, what do our mission and ministry resources offer us as we attempt to honor the cries for justice following the brutal murders of Floyd, Abery, and Taylor? How do we move forward in a shared struggle toward reconciliation of our racist divisions? And for white persons like me, who desire to be in solidarity with my Black sisters and brothers, what is necessary to understand about the white privilege that makes it possible for these tragic manifestations of racist violence to continue?
Our religious traditions, a pluralism that we honor and celebrate at Georgetown, have attempted to fill the temptation to overwhelming despair with their prophetic wisdom. Imam Yahya Hendi, Director for Muslim Life at Georgetown, in a reflection entitled “Demanding Justice for George Floyd and Taking a Stand Against Racism,” offers this: “All forms of racism must be rejected. Racism is a sin against God. Racism is a sin against humanity. Racism is a pandemic and disease that we all have to fight.” Reverend Ebony Grisom, Protestant Chaplain at Georgetown, reflects that “our collective conscious knows that the witnesses are too numerous to name, even as we hold their names and stories in our hearts … We cannot look away, nor can we ‘un-see’ what we saw this week.” And Rabbi Rachel Gardner, Director for Jewish Life at Georgetown, offers that “social justice is an inherently Jewish value and the recent murders of Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, and George Floyd at the hands of police, as well as many other Black folx who have lost their lives to police brutality, necessitate us to act on our Jewish values.”
The Chaplains and Staff of Campus Ministry issued a statement on “Our Response to Racism and Racial Justice: “We lament that all of our traditions have at one time or another throughout history been complicit in raising up some at the expense of others. We who bear the privileges of these systems must reflect on our participation and root out the seeds of racism from our communities. Otherwise, these tragic patterns will persist.”
The Catholic and Jesuit community has responded to this moment for justice and solidarity. Fr. Bryan Massingale offers a reflection on white privilege, Jesuit Patrick Saint-Jean speaks to the loss of breath, and Fr. Mark Bosco examines how the Holy Spirit is calling us today.
Prayerful reflections and statements of solidarity also flowed this week from our Catholic and Jesuit communities. In his Pentecost Sunday homily, Fr. Mark Bosco, Vice President for Mission and Ministry at Georgetown, links the breath of the Holy Spirit giving life to the apostles with the breath denied to George Floyd: “What about the Spirit speaks to us today? . . . The terrible sin of racism that literally took George Floyd’s breath away…We long for a Spirit that advocates, counsels, and comforts.”
In a written reflection, the Jesuit Patrick Saint-Jean shares out of his experience as a Black person in this country: “Blacks are constantly begging for oxygen, a gift that God granted everyone. Centuries of systemic racism, such as redlining and gerrymandering, have rendered a long litany of resources unavailable to the Black community. Air should be added to the list. It is hard for Black people to have to ask for their humanity to be recognized while also asking for breath.” And the Association of Jesuit Colleges and Universities issued a statement on racial violence:
“For more than 200 years, our nation’s Jesuit colleges, universities, high schools, and middle schools have taken the slow and deliberate path of educating students for thoughtful, moral citizenship. Our efforts have been well-intended, yet imperfect. Today, the killings of George Floyd and so many others challenge us to act against the overt and unrecognized racism that lurks in the American community and in the recesses of our own hearts. As our Jesuit mission calls us to do, let us use our collective voices as a lever for justice and the common good. We call upon our students, alumni, faculty, and staff to take concrete steps to make a difference in our own institutions and in our nation.“
All of these statements and reflections caught my attention this week, but perhaps none challenged my conscience, my self-understanding, and my desire to act justly more strongly than this article, “The Assumptions of White Privilege and What We Can Do About It,” by Fr. Bryan Massingale, a priest and theologian at Fordham University. Fr. Massingale, an outspoken advocate for racial justice in the Catholic Church, explores the uncomfortable truths about white privilege from his experience as a Black man in a religious tradition in the U.S. that has too often oppressed marginalized persons instead of lifting them up. Massingale offers this definition of white privilege, or white supremacy, in this way:
“White supremacy fundamentally is the assumption that this country, its political institutions, its cultural heritage, its social policies and its public spaces belong to white people in a way that they do not belong to others. It is the basic assumption that some naturally belong in our public and cultural space and others have to justify being there. Further, it is the suspicion that those ‘others’ are in ‘our’ space only because someone has made special allowances for them.”
Massingale goes on to identify five things that white people need to know and need to do if they desire to be in true solidarity with people of color:
First, understand the difference between being uncomfortable and being threatened;
Second, sit in the discomfort that this hard truth brings: systemic racism benefits white people;
Third, admit your ignorance and do something about it;
Fourth, have the courage to confront your family and friends; and
Fifth, have an unconditional commitment to life that includes challenging unjust social policies and working against attitudes that cloak support for racism.
Fr. Massingale’s recommendations challenged me and made me uncomfortable in a way that I did not expect—understanding and exploring my own privilege and complicity is not easy work. And while I am tempted to forego any meaningful action for racial justice because the work seems too difficult, I know that real solidarity depends on taking the risk of growing in greater awareness about how people of color experience the world and moving from an awareness to loving action born of my own interior freedom. As President DeGioia mentioned in his statement from last week, we must remember that the process of dismantling injustice and inequality begins in the interior:
“Individually, in each of our own interiority, we must determine how we contribute to perpetuating injustice and sustaining structures that cannot continue and that now must be reimagined. And, for us in our shared membership in this Georgetown University community, it remains for us in the Academy to contribute to this work of reimagining the social, political, economic and moral structures to ensure justice for all—and especially for those for whom it has been too long denied.”
For resources from Georgetown’s Center for Social Justice organized by racial identities and groups for responding now, please see here.
To receive regular newsletters from Georgetown’s multi-faith religious chaplaincies, please sign up here.
Ever since I was a kid, I have looked forward to the summer as a time to catch up on reading books for fun. But in recent years, necessary reading for work and study have made it more difficult for me to make the time for a growing pile of books recommended to me by friends and family. This summer, I hope to reverse this trend and enjoy some fiction, both classic texts that I have never tried and some contemporary favorites on popular year-end Top 10 lists.
This summer I hope to enjoy some fun reading that has piled up in recent years. Are you looking forward to spending time with any texts this summer?
But reading does not have to be exclusively a professional obligation or a relaxing outlet. Reading can actually be a way to grow in spiritual knowledge, self-discovery, and action for justice, all of which are especially needed these days as we continue to confront the uncertainty of the pandemic.
In his book Discernment, the trusted spiritual writer and teacher Henri Nouwen describes the multiple ways that we can read the texts of the world, ourselves, and the Transcendent. According to Nouwen, the books that we need to read to grow in spiritual discernment include the books of nature, sacred texts, events, persons (both living and historical), and social injustices. By reading these “books” not for intellectual comprehension but for personal transformation, we can more easily allow ourselves to be moved by God within the signs of our daily lives. This type of spiritual reading requires that we read slowly and patiently, not as consumers of information but as people on a long journey of interior and communal growth.
In the case of spiritual reading, Nouwen defines this practice in contrast to the standard approach of digesting a text:
“Reading often means gathering information, acquiring new insight and knowledge, and mastering a new field. It can lead to degrees, diplomas, and certificates. Spiritual reading, however, is different. It means not simply reading about spiritual things but also reading about spiritual things in a spiritual way. That requires a willingness not just to read but to be read, not just to master but to be mastered by words.”
Acquiring this spiritual knowledge invites us to read more with our hearts than with our heads. It means allowing ourselves to read words slowly, becoming attentive to how the words on a page make us feel and potentially move us to make meaning of the world. This approach requires frequent pauses and suspension of the natural instinct to rush along, thinking about what might come next. It is ultimately a sacred process in which we listen for the movement of the Spirit within us as we go along.
A view of nature just outside of our front door. Henri Nouwen invites us to read nature spiritually. As you spend time in the natural environment, do you reflect more deeply on the grandeur of trees, plants, and natural life?
So, this summer I invite you, as you are able, to read spiritually. You might select a favorite poem, a passage from a sacred text in your religious tradition, daily reflection offered by a spiritual writer, or even a news article or commentary about some of the social injustices that this pandemic has brought more clearly to the surface. Whatever you choose, I suggest the following simple steps:
Read the entire passage at once. Take a pause.
Slowly read each word of the passage until you reach the end. Take a pause.
Slowly read each word or short phrase of the passage. Take a pause. And then allow yourself to sink deeper and deeper into the words. What are you hearing? What are you feeling as you savor the words? Are there any new insights about yourself, yourself in relationship to others, yourself in relationship to God? Are you feeling moved to act in some way?
After you’ve spiritually read through the entire passage, take some time for silence to allow yourself to listen to whatever it is that you hear interiorly.
As a taste of this way of proceeding, I offer below one of my favorite poems, “As Kingfishers Catch Fire,” by the Jesuit poet Gerard Manley Hopkins:
As kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies draw flame;
As tumbled over rim in roundy wells
Stones ring; like each tucked string tells, each hung bell’s
Bow swung finds tongue to fling out broad its name;
Each mortal thing does one thing and the same:
Deals out that being indoors each one dwells;
Selves — goes itself; myself it speaks and spells,
Crying Whát I dó is me: for that I came.
I say móre: the just man justices;
Keeps grace: thát keeps all his goings graces;
Acts in God’s eye what in God’s eye he is —
Chríst — for Christ plays in ten thousand places,
Lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his
To the Father through the features of men’s faces.
A hallmark of Jesuit education is a commitment to a style of teaching, known as Ignatian Pedagogy, which emphasizes the personalization of learning, the social context in which learning occurs, and the ultimate goals of education: serving each other and the common good. The paradigm of Ignatian Pedagogy, which flows from Jesuit spirituality and features a dynamic inter-play of the five stages of Context-Experience-Reflection-Action-Evaluation, is not a rigid one-size fits all manual for teaching but rather a spur to deeper consideration of students as whole persons in the learning process. The paradigm’s often overlooked fifth stage, evaluation, offers all of us at Georgetown an opportunity to comprehensively reflect on what we have learned from our teaching and working during the last two months so that we might proceed with a better understanding for how to more effectively journey together as we meet the challenges before us.
Taken from “Ignatian Pedagogy: An Abridged Version,” Ignatian Pedagogy is five inter-related stages and ends with evaluation. How are we evaluating the experience of teaching and learning in the pandemic?
This year’s Teaching Learning and Innovation Summer Institute (TLISI) conference, an annual conference hosted by the Center for New Designs in Learning & Scholarship after spring semester ends, provided rich opportunities to more deeply evaluate what we learned from educating in the virtual environment from March to May. TLISI is always an engaging experience of cross-campus, peer-to-peer sharing, and SCS has contributed significantly to the conference in the past few years, offering a number of mission-related sessions (including here, here, and here). Two panels stood out at this year’s all-virtual conference: one session led by students and another session led by Georgetown’s Deans.
This year’s TLISI conference offered several opportunities to reflect on what worked and what didn’t in our teaching, working, and learning at Georgetown in the final months of the spring semester.
Evaluation, in the context of Ignatian Pedagogy, needs to be understood as broader and deeper than simply assigning a numerical score for performance. Rather, evaluation in the Ignatian style involves taking a deep look at how teaching encouraged “fuller human growth” beyond simple “academic mastery.” Did this learning experience foster opportunities for “further reflection” beyond simply transmitting knowledge or skills? I was so heartened to hear a range of student voices reflecting on what worked and what didn’t in their virtual learning. These insights, some of which I summarize below, provide important reminders about how much traditional methods of teaching need to adjust to this unprecedented moment:
One-on-one faculty engagement with students matters now more than ever. Students reported that their sense of belonging and community deepened when faculty members reached out to check in on them. A relationship of trust between teacher and student helped learners stay connected to the content of their courses. This one-on-one commitment also reinforced a sense of solidarity and mutuality between students and faculty during a time of crisis.
Faculty conducting virtual classes need to mix up their learning activities and provide space for students to actively engage the subject matter and each other. 20 or 30 minutes is probably the maximum time a student can sit through a synchronous class session without being invited to share a reflection, ask a question, or actively explore the class material. Students shared that they were more likely to stay engaged if they were drawn into active participation by faculty. The students also emphasized that flexibility is crucial as some students might not be as disposed to participate actively in class due to adverse conditions in their home learning environments.
Students desire spaces to reflect and to exercise their minds and bodies beyond what is necessary to comprehend their course material. This reinforced for me that faculty have an opportunity to utilize the Jesuit Values at Georgetown, as Dr. Shenita Ray at SCS has done with a pedagogical strategies framework she developed, to incorporate deeper reflection into virtual learning experiences.
The panel of Georgetown deans offered similar insights as they shared lessons learned from managing their organizations during this time. While each school operates in its own unique context and faces different challenges and opportunities, the panel reflected many things held in common. The deans emphasized several shared themes about the need in this time of crisis to:
Deliver clear and well-coordinated communications to their students, staff, and faculty.
Cultivate structures of community (amongst faculty, staff, and student groups) in which the bonds of personal and communal connection can help withstand feelings of dislocation and separation through self-growth opportunities like the SCS Daily Digital Meditations.
Embrace change and adaptability about existing ways of doing business. This crisis actually invites new ways of proceeding that will ultimately improve the management of Georgetown’s operations.
Express gratitude for the gifts of our community, especially the heroic and inspiring actions that our students, staff, and faculty are taking to uphold the mission of Georgetown University.
There is still much to ponder as we evaluate the experience of closing out the spring semester by learning and working in an all-virtual context. But I am hopeful that the valuable reflections at TLISI provide a helpful foundation for deeper discernment about how we are called to meet this moment. Our unique mission and values as a university present a depth of resources for how to proceed in our learning and working at Georgetown. As Mara Brecht notes in a recent article in America Magazine, COVID-19 invites an even fuller commitment to our Jesuit mission and heritage:
” Overrun hospitals, a halted world economy and a pervasive aura of fear and anxiety turn abstractions about mission and identity into reality. In this moment, need becomes nakedly apparent: our own existential and economic needs, the need of people who are sick and suffering for compassion and care, and the desperate needs of the poor and vulnerable among us. Responding to need, in its wide range and many manifestations must become our starting point for assessing the distinctively Catholic nature of our institutions.”
This week’s post comes from Mary J. Novak, associate director for Ignatian Formation for SCS & the Law Center, and adjunct professor of Law. Mary also serves as Chaplain-in-Residence in the Gewirz Residential Community located on the Law Center’s Capitol Hill Campus.
Talking to students, staff, and faculty at any Jesuit institution, I will often use the word “vocation.” To some ears, this language is familiar and serves as an invitation to a deeper conversation. To others less familiar with Ignatian language, I will see the slight furrowing of the brow.
If I am quick on my feet, I will say: “You know, the Frederick Buechner definition of vocation of ‘where your deepest desires meet the world’s greatest needs and the community confirms your call,’ therein you will find your vocation.” Buechner is much more eloquent than I am, saying, “The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.”
Standing on my terrace first thing in the morning, I look up and can often see something like this.
It is Buechner’s definition of vocation that Jamie Kralovec and I use to end the SCS student retreats (pictures of which Jamie included in his last blog post). Buechner says this (and please pardon the gendered language):
“IT COMES FROM the Latin vocare, to call, and means the work a man is called to by God.
There are all different kinds of voices calling you to all different kinds of work, and the problem is to find out which is the voice of God rather than of Society, say, or the Super-ego, or Self-Interest.
By and large a good rule for finding out is this. The kind of work God usually calls you to is the kind of work (a) that you need most to do and (b) that the world most needs to have done. If you really get a kick out of your work, you’ve presumably met requirement (a), but if your work is writing TV deodorant commercials, the chances are you’ve missed requirement (b). On the other hand, if your work is being a doctor in a leper colony, you have probably met requirement (b), but if most of the time you’re bored and depressed by it, the chances are you have not only bypassed (a) but probably aren’t helping your patients much either.
Neither the hair shirt nor the soft berth will do. The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.”
In higher educational settings, we so often focus on the first part of this definition of vocation, what the student needs most to do. During this pandemic, I know I am not alone in focusing more and more on the second part of Buechner’s definition, what “the world most needs to have done” and I wonder if the order of these questions needs to change.
This pandemic reveals more fully than ever in my lifetime that our systems and society do not value all life, especially the lives of those who have been historically marginalized, the materially poor and the most physically vulnerable. The raging pandemic has revealed our systemic operative racism, ageism, classism, toxic nationalism, etc. in ways that are stark and hard to ignore.
Last month in the Financial Times, Arundhati Roy called this moment in our world history a “portal,” saying:
“Historically, pandemics have forced humans to break with the past and imagine their world anew. This one is no different. It is a portal, a gateway between one world and the next.”
Can we imagine our world anew? What does the world most need to have done to get there? And only when we answer that question can we ask: what do you/I/we most need to do? This is the treasure of our Jesuit Heritage: not only can we ask these questions in this setting, but we can lean into discerning them together as community to build a better world in the common good.
Pope Francis recently gave an interview that I think offers much inspiration as we end this academic year. In particular, our SCS graduating students may find some needed consolation in the pope’s remarks, which concern two themes: the “now” and memory. While these ideas might seem like opposites, they come together in a deeper union if we allow ourselves to recognize just how deeply loved we truly are.
Photo from SCS student retreat. Cherished memories like this rise to the surface when I reflect on the Class of 2020.
First, Pope Francis challenges all of us in a period of pandemic to greater solidarity, especially with those who are disproportionately at risk and suffering. He then invites us, in our “lockdown” at home, to find new creativity and imagination. Pope Francis writes:
“Take care of the now, for the sake of tomorrow. Always creatively, with a simple creativity, capable of inventing something new each day. Inside the home that’s not hard to discover, but don’t run away, don’t take refuge in escapism, which in this time is of no use to you.”
I first reacted to this encouragement with inspired energy but then wondered, as I am sure many of our graduates may also be feeling: what if I am not feeling creative or capable or imagining anew in these days of staying-at-home? What if I am not able to find a creative way to re-frame this unusual circumstance of graduating without all of the same ceremonial details of our much-anticipated rituals of commencement?
Pope Francis offers an affirming response later in the interview when, drawing upon the lessons of literature in Virgil’s Aeneid and the writings of Fyodor Dostoevsky, he writes:
“We need to recover our memory because memory will come to our aid. This is not humanity’s first plague; the others have become mere anecdotes. We need to remember our roots, our tradition, which is packed full of memories…So to be in lockdown, but yearning, with that memory that yearns and begets hope – that is what will help escape our confinement.”
Here, Francis is saying that we need to draw upon the resources of our past in order to take care of the now. In keeping with so many religious and spiritual traditions, including Ignatian spirituality, Pope Francis is offering all of us an opportunity to more deeply experience the love of the transcendent by utilizing all of our senses, including our memories. What would happen if we, recognizing that the cherished annual traditions of commencement have been turned somewhat upside-down, reimagined the graduation celebration by getting in touch with some of our most cherished memories as students at Georgetown?
Graduating students: here is my special invitation to engage with your memories in the days ahead as you prepare to receive your degrees. I invite you to find a quiet space and:
Remember some experience of feeling gratitude during your time as a Georgetown student. Pick out one consoling memory that rises to the surface and recreate all of the details of the experience with your senses.
Remain in this memory for a few minutes, calling to mind why you were so grateful about this event, person, or activity.
Then, return to where you are seated now and call to mind all of the details of your current location. Go back and forth between these places and memories for a few minutes.
Conclude your prayerful remembering by expressing a desire to be able to bring that memory back into the present whenever you are in need of some hope in these days of closing the academic year, and celebrating your journey as a student at Georgetown.
Reliving some of our consoling memories, like the SCS holiday party, can give us hope in the present. Graduating students, what are your favorite memories during your time at Georgetown?
My own reflection surfaced some rich memories that I have of the Class of 2020, including time spent on retreat with students at the Calcagnini Contemplative Center, in the classroom engaging in enthusiastic debate and discussion about how to be values-guided professionals, and in fun social settings like the annual SCS holiday party and new student welcomes. I cherish these memories and they give me so much hope about this year’s graduates.
And while the rituals of next week’s commencement might not have these same exterior qualities, I invite you in the coming days to spend some time savoring your rich memories of your Georgetown experience on the interior. Our consoling memories may not make up for what we are missing today, but my hope is that your joyful memories might give you some needed hope in the present.
“The future is so unclear in almost every aspect. But what is clear is that the future will not be business as usual. So what do we do know?”
This was the question posed by Mary Novak, associate director for Ignatian Formation at SCS and the Law Center, as part of her video reflection this week in Georgetown’s “Spiritual Continuity” series. Mary’s answer, drawing upon the universal richness of spiritual and religious traditions, is that only love grounded in inner resources can move us beyond the “destructive tendencies” of this perilous moment in history. The way we do this inner work, according to Mary, is to become “more fully human and to become more fully a human community” through an increase in spiritual practices, including fasting, praying, and engaging in some form of contemplation.
Mary Novak, associate director for Ignatian Formation at SCS and the Law School, delivered a “Spiritual Continuity” message on contemplation this week. Check out Mary’s video reflection by clicking on the image.
Mary then outlines an invitation to go deeper into contemplative practices by pointing to the particular resources within and across our spiritual traditions, reflected in the number of virtual programs for deep silence offered through Georgetown’s Office of Campus Ministry. It is important to point out, as Mary does, that growing contemplatively does not mean disengaging from the world or indulging in fantasy. Rather, contemplation, as explained by the Jesuit theologian Walter Burghardt, is a “long, loving look at the real.”
Contemplation invites us to encounter reality, engaging with both the sorrows (“I hate this pandemic”) and the potential possibilities (“I am called by this pandemic to ….”), in order to discover how we are being invited to greater love and greater community. In addition to the contemplative resources on the Campus Ministry website, we invite you to join our SCS Daily Digital Meditation at 12 pm each day of the work week (sign up here). Mary’s reflection inspires some important questions that I would invite us to consider this week:
Do you engage in contemplation in some way? If you do not, but you would like to consider contemplative practices, what factors hold you back from engaging?
Mary describes contemplation’s commitment to “deep listening.” What does it mean for you to engage in this kind of listening?
Has this pandemic invited you to consider a new calling? Are you feeling motivated to do something for others – in your local community or the world beyond – because of this situation?
