My educational philosophy

I don't have one. Not yet.

That's my first class. We meet every day from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. for one week. We had homework due the first day of class. Tonight our professor gave us five articles to read. They're all interesting. They're all relevant. And I wish I had more time to spend chewing on them, gnawing them apart. But I don't have much time for anything, really.

I will take a moment to tell you how relieved I am to be here. For some reason, part naivety, part stupidity, I thought I was going to find multiple struggles to overcome in becoming a Catholic teacher. Perhaps fueled by my lingering concerns about the education I received as a Catholic student, more likely fueled by my misplaced anger toward those concerns, I thought learning to teach in a Catholic school would limit my options, my creativity, my reach.

From everything I've encountered so far, I was wrong.

We're learning, reading, discussing the importance of inquiry in the classroom, the need for a social investment in community and positive social change, catholicism (little "c") as a demand for universality, for inclusion of all people, regardless of their differences. And we're learning how to facilitate those forms of learning without sacrificing faith, service or belief. Because they're all part of the same thing.

I don't know if I have means to explain all of this yet; and even if I did, I certainly don't have the time. But I hope to, so please be patient with me.

There's something special going on here. I can feel it. The Jesuits know something I don't about faith, about learning, about teaching, about life.

"What avail is it to win prescribed amounts of information about geography and history, to win the ability to read and write, if in the process the individual loses his own soul?"

John Dewey wrote that 1938. It's still relevant, warning against an educational system of banking information in students, focusing on transmitting information rather than transforming it.

More than anything right now, I can feel the weight of what I'm learning pounding into me the importance of a soul in education, a love of learning and need for growth through it.