By Ellen M. Maccarone
Imagine your classroom full of students. What do you see first? The desks askew? The white board not erased? Who do you see first? The “A” student? The empty desk where the struggling student will sit if he comes at all? With an intentional disposition, these imaginings comprise a Composition of Place.
Compositions of Place are an important device in St. Ignatius’ Spiritual Exercises. In these, those making the retreat are asked to employ the imagination in prayer, to imagine the scene and through so doing, to learn, with both head and heart, about something otherwise difficult to contemplate that will be useful in their prayer and relationship with Jesus.
I would like to tell you that it was some divine inspiration that brought me to this as a method to encourage deep learning and class discussion. It was, however, an act of desperation. In an interdisciplinary core capstone class, their final core curriculum course, my seniors were not talking! A few weeks into the semester we were set to discuss speeches of Arrupe, Kolvenbach, and Nicolás. I knew I had to try something different. These speeches were too important to their understanding of their own Jesuit education; I could not just lecture. Taking seriously the idea of experience in the Ignatian Pedagogical Paradigm, I decided I wanted them to enter into the class by experiencing something of the Jesuit spirituality that animated the Fathers General we were to cover. A Composition of Place seemed a way to proceed. I explained the device in its original context and our secular adaptation of it to class. I asked them to imagine what lies beneath injustice in the current century and what permits it to persist, and to re-imagine our institutions for overcoming injustice in our current time and place. Class has never been the same.
Now we begin every class with a Composition of Place. Without worrying about finding the right passage in the text to bring up or whether they agree, disagree, or fully understand all the arguments, students are integrating the knowledge and understanding of their hearts and minds, using class concepts, even before they realize they are. I talk with them, sharing my own imaginings on what place we are composing. Once we exhaust the composition, we move to a more traditional discussion about the dense, mostly philosophical, texts. Those discussions, though, are informed by what we have already done in our Composition of Place and are thus richer, more contextual, and do a better job of bringing the ideals of solidarity to the theories of social justice we are reading.
Finally, the students themselves are more engaged with the material, with me, and with each other. They are reporting in their written reflections that they feel they can trust one another and are more comfortable with each other. They are making better use of class concepts, understanding more difficult material, and offering better criticisms.
Gonzaga University students (above) enjoying the content and context of their Ignatian-inspired learning community. Photo courtesy of the Gonzaga University School of Law.
When I imagine my classroom now, I imagine a community of learners in a very different way than I did at the start of the semester. Out of my desperation has come an adaptation of Ignatius’ method with great results. As I move from the imagination of a Composition of Place to the contemplation of my teaching, my students as persons, and solidarity and social justice that is the subject of the seminar, I am grounded in Ignatian pedagogy in a new and profound way and so are my students, as they prepare for graduation and to go out into the world ready to set it on fire.
Ellen M. Maccarone, associate professor of Philosophy and faculty advisor to the president at Gonzaga University, specializes in applied ethics and is the president of the Board of Directors of SEEL Spokane, which offers the Spiritual Exercises retreat in Spokane, Washington.
The featured cover photo (above) is courtesy of Gonzaga University.