Abstract
In this COVID-era study, Catholic school teachers report the challenges that they experienced in supporting classroom communities during remote instruction, as well as the strategies that they enacted to address such challenges and make robust relationships with and among remote students. While teachers engaged in remote teaching, they were also studying in a Catholic Master of Arts in Teaching program, where they participated in weekly Freirian culture circles – structured dialogues designed to help teachers identify problems of equity and collectively devise appropriate responses. The teachers found that classroom community was hindered by a lack of in-person affordances, socioemotional stressors related to the pandemic, struggles to engage students, and structures of hybrid teaching. In response, teachers used the culture circles to create and/or share strategies for supporting remote classroom communities, such as, classroom meetings and small-group collaboration. Teachers recognized that efforts developing classroom communities were intimately connected to commitments to equity.
DOI
10.15365/joce.2402032021
First Page
43
Last Page
61
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.
Recommended Citation
Beltramo, J. L., Layam, K., Lucas, J., & Schmitt, J. (2021). Cultivating Catholic Classroom Communities During Remote Teaching. Journal of Catholic Education. https://doi.org/10.15365/joce.2402032021
Included in
Elementary Education and Teaching Commons, Other Education Commons, Other Teacher Education and Professional Development Commons, Secondary Education and Teaching Commons