How Catholic education in the
U.S. has changed due to Covid-19
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| St Mary's Catholic school in Waco, TX closes its doors for the remainder of the 2019-2020 school year |
National Catholic Educational Association's Chief Innovation
Officer says Catholic schools in the U.S. have shifted from the classroom to
digital platforms "with enthusiasm, joy, creativity, resilience and
innovation".
By Sr Bernadette Mary Reis, fsp
The Covid-19 pandemic has led to a lot of changes in
people's lives, from the youngest to the oldest. Kevin Baxter, Chief Innovation
Officer for the National Catholic Educational Association (NCEA) in the United
States, spoke with Vatican News about some of those changes regarding students
and teachers in the nation's Catholic schools.
From proximate to remote
Kevin Baxter noted that the most “evident change” in
education across the United States is the shift from providing education in
classrooms to providing it remotely. School teachers, principals, students and
parents alike have had “to adjust to remote instruction”.
The most inspiring for Kevin as a Catholic has been “to see
how Catholic schools have responded. It’s been with enthusiasm. It's been with
joy. It's been with creativity and resilience and innovation.”
He is not the only one who is positive about the shift.
Kevin has spoken with more than half of the approximately 180 Catholic School
superintendents in the U.S. The stories, he said, “are just incredible about
how positive the move has gone from their perspective, from a logistical
perspective.”
Long-term concern
This shift is not the only change the Catholic educational
community has had to adapt to. The second change regards the close connection
between the Catholic Faith and the Catholic School: not being able to
participate in Mass in the parish. “Not having the Eucharist, I think, has been
a big challenge for the Catholic faithful in the U.S. The other practical
implication of that for Catholic schools is that obviously churches that aren't
able to then have any offertory collection, or have a diminished offertory
recollection, can’t support the schools to degree they supported schools in the
past”.
This fact, Kevin said, proposes “long-term concerns”.
Learning curve happened almost overnight
Doors to the schools were literally shuttered in many places
overnight, Kevin said. “I can’t tell you the number of stories we heard where
teachers really weren't sure what was happening and what the extent of this was
going to be. And they said goodbye to their kids on a Thursday and then found
out over the weekend they weren’t going back, and [they] had to adjust to a
remote instruction by the next Monday. Schools were just doing it on the fly
and doing it very, very capably”.
Given the economic condition of both schools and students’
families, some have been able to adapt to a completely digital platform. Others
have had to be even more creative due to the fact that some students in lower
income areas “wouldn't necessarily have that seamless [internet] connection at
home, or it’s not stable or high-quality". Schools sometimes “don't have
the technology infrastructure present at the school to really deliver”.
In these cases, Kevin told about “parents having to come by
the school and dropping off assignments and picking up assignments and using
baskets for different grade levels, and it's really kind of fascinating how
people have gotten creative about how to do that.”
Face to face is ideal
Although education can be done remotely, Kevin emphasized
that “Catholic schools are really about community. It’s about being in
relationship with Jesus, relationship with one another, relationship with their
teachers. That sense of community is so vital to the success and to the
successful outcomes that we see in Catholic schools”.
Building community does not only involve the students, but parents
as well. How to build community online is “not exactly the same” as being in
person, Kevin says. However, Catholic schools have begun to use “Zoom
technology and other technologies to bring people together, yes for
instruction, but also just for prayer experiences, for community gatherings and
parent meetings”.
Innovation amidst devastation
Kevin admits that the innovation taking place in the
Catholic school setting is side by side with the devastating effects of the
Covid-19 pandemic. He has found inspiration in what one Catholic superintendent
shared with him: “What I'm choosing to do is not to think about what we're
losing potentially through this process, and what our loss is, but rather:
what’s trying to be born, and how on the other side of it can we be better
through the experiences that we're going through?”
In the end, it is all about learning, even in this
devastation period, Kevin admitted.
“There’s things we are learning through this process that I
don’t want to lose sight of. I'm really trying to think about how we can take
those learnings and really make our schools even stronger after we get through
the challenge of this current [pandemic]", he said.
About the NCEA
The National Catholic Educational Association (NCEA) is the
largest association of private school teachers in the world. It prides itself
on providing support and development to Catholic educators who combine their
professional skills with the teaching mission of the Catholic Church. NCEA was
founded in St Louis, MO in 1904. As a national association, it provides a voice
to the public at large for Catholic education. Currently, the NCEA focuses on
leadership training for school administrators at all levels: superintendents,
presidents, principals, and boards.
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