Today, “2.0” is used throughout the education world to signal a transformational reinvention of schooling. STEM, STEAM, digital learning, and design thinking are educational responses to a changing social and technological landscape. Similarly, Episcopal schools are exploring how best to live out their core values in the context of a changing social and religious landscape.
Community 2.0
In the past thirty years, Episcopal schools have worked hard to significantly broaden the racial, cultural, and socio-economic composition of their school communities. Like their secular independent school colleagues, however, Episcopal schools slowly realized that simply increasing the number of students from x, y, or z background did not, in and of itself, build a stronger community. Some students and families continued to feel marginalized, left out, or invisible while some longstanding constituents questioned why the school had to change at all. Common ground was sometimes hard to find and mutual understanding elusive. Often, the school itself could not articulate who it was, where it was going, or why.
Today, many Episcopal schools have turned to their Episcopal identity as the primary means through which to articulate, grapple with, and live more fully into what it means to be an authentic community in the 21st century. The gospel of love, the Episcopal emphasis on scripture, tradition, and reason, and Christian values of redemption, sacrifice, compassion, and generosity provide a powerful framework for building what the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. called “the beloved community:” one in which each person is known, valued, and loved as a child of God.
NAES Executive Director Dan Heischman recently wrote, “…our schools—once considered places of exclusivity and uniformity—are not only representative of the larger culture, but can indeed be important teachers in helping us understand the very real changes that are going on in the culture all around us.” Today’s Episcopal schools are taking this opportunity to heart.
Religious Identity and Spiritual Formation 2.0
Christians and non-Christians, inter-faith families, seekers, the “spiritual but not religious,” agnostics and atheists are all represented in today’s Episcopal schools. Gone are the days when schools could assume that families have a regular religious practice, share common beliefs, or are familiar with how the Episcopal Church lives out its Christian faith. And although most Americans continue to believe in God, religion is a highly charged topic in American society. Finally, a frenetic, consumer-oriented culture makes it difficult for young people to engage in a dialogue with God and themselves.
Today’s Episcopal schools are embracing the opportunities that their Episcopal identity affords to develop religious literacy, increase inter-religious understanding, and engage students in meaningful spiritual work. School worship invites the entire community to take time to listen for “the still small voice of God” and experience a loving and expansive Christianity. The study of religion, chapel and worship, and meaningful service to others help students to discern who they are and what they believe. In an Episcopal school, students are encouraged to explore important questions of belief and identity and to engage with those who believe as they do as well as those who see things quite differently. This is the soul’s work for which today’s young people yearn.
Service 2.0
For many years, community service in schools largely consisted of singular acts of charity or service and often occurred outside of the formal school day. However, the burgeoning fields of critical service learning, global education, and place-based learning have led many schools, including Episcopal schools, to re-think the place of community service in the life of the school.
Today, Episcopal schools across the country are transforming “community service activities” into coherent service-learning programs that are sustained, meaningful, and integrated into the school day. Episcopal schools are doing exciting work in this area, from courses that blend social justice issues and social action to significant public-private partnerships either on campus or abroad, and sustained relationships with local, national, and global social-change initiatives.
This reinvigorated commitment to service extends beyond secular notions of social responsibility, good citizenship, or building a college resume. Rather, Episcopal schools are deepening their theological mandate to be morally courageous, socially transformative institutions.
As Christian communities, Episcopal schools are called to love our neighbor as ourselves, to minister to the least among us, and to “serve Christ in all persons.” It is a mission that remains as relevant and as necessary as ever and one that Episcopal schools are living into for the 21st century.Click here to view this article in the NAES library.