St Ignatius of Loyola Catholic College is a brand new Companion School in New Zealand, a historic first, a dream that took decades to fulfill! Companion schools in the Australian provinces are schools that have embraced the Ignatian charism. And what better way for St. Ignatius to prepare for its inaugural class of students than equipping its teachers with the distinctively Ignatian brand of learning and teaching: the Ignatian Pedagogical Paradigm?
For this special professional development in November of 2023, Fr. Johnny C. Go SJ, author of Learning by Refraction, was invited by the School Principal, Mr. Dean Wearmouth, to spend one day with the teachers to converse about Ignatian pedagogy. The teachers had already been acquainting themselves with the IPP even prior to Fr. Go’s visit through a series of self-study sessions among themselves. The professional conversations with Fr. Go, therefore, provided an opportunity for them not only to seek clarification about some of the concepts and principles in the Learning by Refraction approach, but also to sink their teeth more into designing Reflection.
The sessions were designed to lead into a hands-on workshop where the teachers would be formulating Insights for the content areas that they were teaching. As in other workshops, the task felt daunting and even overwhelming, but as teachers began to discuss and apply the proposed suggestions for designing Reflection, they grew in both competence and confidence. As Fr. Go said, the quality of the insights proposed was impressive.
Needless to say, it was a great preparation for the teachers of St. Ignatius of Loyola as they created history by being the first Ignatian Companion School in all of New Zealand. To our colleagues at St. Ignatius of Loyola College, we say “Nau mai, haere mai!” to the Asia-Pacific and global family of Jesuit and Ignatian schools!
