Spiritually Supportive Online Pedagogy: Awakened Virtual Schools

• In Event: Spirituality in Education: Becoming an Awakened School

Abstract

Objectives & Perspectives

This presentation shares a case study of how we applied our initial research to maintain our spiritually supportive school culture when we moved to virtual education due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Our school is a K-12 Episcopal school with 1130 students from a variety of religious and spiritual backgrounds, and students, faculty, and parents meet in chapel regularly. During the pandemic, chapel took place entirely over Zoom. Our chaplains used the opportunity to deepen a program they had begun before the pandemic of focusing on student voices and ways in which students find meaning in suffering.

Modes of Inquiry & Data Sources

This is a case study (Yin, 2014), using a purposive sample (Palys, 2008) to examine a spiritually supportive school’s attempts to maintain its culture in an online environment. Our data sources for this additional research were interviews with the chaplains who planned the virtual Zoom meetings and observations of the online chapel gatherings.

Findings

Chapel follows a simple format that includes prayers, songs, scriptural readings, poems, and speakers on a variety of topics. Student readers and speakers were able to pre-record their presentations if they chose, which made them less anxious about speaking. Before the pandemic, one of the chaplains had experimented with themes connecting spirituality with various aspects of students’ lives, such as science, art, sports, nature, social justice, family, and citizenship. During the pandemic, these themes were extended and the oldest students in each of the divisions (sixth, eighth, and twelfth graders) were encouraged to choose themes (or suggest their own) and offer 3-5 minute presentations in chapel.

Conclusions

On Zoom, those pre-recorded presentations often became highly personal, vulnerable, and powerful. Students were less afraid to talk about intimate moments in their spiritual practices or art forms; they were inspired, as they recorded in their own homes, to speak forcefully about social justice, to admit their deepest fears and sources of strength, and to talk about what they were learning from the pandemic ordeal. The chaplains had reason to connect with students as they prepared their presentations, and those connections offered profound opportunities for a kind of spiritual direction that could otherwise seem awkward. While we definitely experienced the same increases in anxiety and depression that all schools struggled with, we also saw Zoom chapel emerging as a powerful community- and strength-building tool.

Significance

There is significant research showing that connecting teens’ learning to bigger narratives helps both their understanding and emotional resilience grow (Immordino-Yang & Knecht, 2020). A culture that encourages students to tell their biggest and deepest stories publicly, and in which such story-telling is modeled and honored, is one that fosters learning and increases student engagement. While our chapel program goes back decades and the school explicitly encourages students to reflect on their spiritual lives, there is nothing preventing secular and public schools from creating similar programs. Every teenager, regardless of their faith background or lack thereof, has a story they are yearning to share.

Author

• Julian Bull, Campbell Hall