World News
Jesuit educators take opportunity to compare notes across world borders
Published: August 3, 2012
BOSTON (CNS) -- Participants in the first International Colloquium on Jesuit Secondary Education said they enjoyed not only the opportunity to discuss Jesuit identity of schools in a global context, but also the opportunity to network and learn informally from their peers throughout the world. In an informal conversation between sessions, two educators, one Irish and one Italian, discussed collaborating directly to expand curriculums by possibly exchanging teachers or students between the two countries. "We were trying to understand how we could expose our children to more globalized opportunities. Ireland has got many similarities with us in terms of being a Catholic country," said Gianluca Vignola, who coordinates Jesuit education with the Italian province for the network of Italian schools. "We could offer to Irish teachers opportunity for arts, for Latin, or for other disciplines that they would like to learn from Italy, while we would profit from the English language, which for us is very important," he said. With delegates from 304 schools throughout the world, Jesuit educators found opportunities to interact with counterparts from other countries. Delegates said they picked up useful knowledge to take back to their missions in the countries where they live and the schools where they work. "The key thing that has come through again and again ... is the notion of networking, of twinning, of learning from what is going on from other schools, particularly those of us that are from the African schools. We're learning we can share what's going on with each other and in that way strengthen things," said Jesuit Father Peter Henriot, who is working to build and organize a school in Kasungu, Malawi.
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