Five years of Educate Magis: Jesuit schools collaborating

It’s been 5 years since Educate Magis invited, for the first-time, educators from Jesuit schools around the world to join and explore a new way of universal reflection, discernment and collaboration. This invitation has offered new opportunities for schools to go beyond their frontiers into a digital world where teachers, leadership teams, school staff and students have engaged with schools from diverse backgrounds and contexts.

Educate Magis is the global community of Jesuit and Ignatian Educators collaborating in solidarity to empower our global network of schools. With over 10.000 members, this global online community opens a new way of proceeding for our schools in service of the Jesuit mission: sharing  programs and resources available in our global network through the online platform, and building new tools and programs to support schools in their commitment.

A number of Global Projects have emerged and grown from teachers’ conversations on Educate Magis. The latest one is the global student project “A day in my life living under COVID-19”, a powerful global reflection project that enabled students to express their hopes and worries while in lockdown due to the pandemic, so other students could read them and engage in reflective learning with their teachers. Twenty Jesuit schools from the United States, Mexico, Brazil, United Kingdom, Ireland, Spain, Portugal, Mozambique, Australia, Philippines, and India participated in this project and thousands of students connected to read and reflect on the stories.

Another outcome of the recent global exchanges was the delivery of the Global Ignatian Retreat “On Earth as it is in Heaven”, which provided tools for interested educators on how to conduct their own online retreat for and with their school communities.

Our global community has many amazing traits which have strengthened our universal mission throughout these years. Perhaps the most notable and important of these traits, particularly at this time, is that of generosity. The innovative resources and tools that have been kindly shared and created by the community for the community are many:

• The very popular Global Citizenship Online Course, designed to give educators and school leaders in Jesuit and Ignatian schools an introduction into the topic of Global Citizenship Education from an Ignatian perspective.
• The Connected Classrooms tool, which provides an opportunity to connect students with other students around the world via video, so they can share and learn together through a uniquely global experience.
• The infographic “Our Global Dimension”, a project inspired to emanate what is important and unique about Jesuit Education, and highlighting the features of Jesuit schools.
• The Mission and Identity page, which offers resources to enable educators to deepen their understanding of Mission and Identity and their appropriation of Jesuit education and Ignatian spirituality.
• The interactive map of Jesuit Education: a contemporary map, with a compilation of the most important documents and events in contemporary Jesuit Education, including their origins, authors and important dates.
• The well known and widely used Interactive and printable Global Map of Jesuit schools, a powerful visual identity and representation of the extent of our primary and secondary schools’ network.     

If you have not joined Educate Magis yet and would like to be part of this global community, please join us through this link.

As a member you will also have access to the New Educate Magis Mobile App, available for IOS and Android, where you can read global stories and news from Jesuit schools across the globe and exchange ideas and projects through conversations with educators from Jesuit schools all over the world.