World Religions, a second semester senior theology elective, has helped expose students to the diverse religions of the world for over 25 years. Last year, the introduction of Zoom learning allowed World Religions teacher Rob Garavaglia to organize Zoom meetings with speakers around the world and offer students a firsthand perspective on the religions they learn about in class. After two years, the Zoom program has proved to be a successful way to foster learning beyond the classroom.

“I think students obviously got a firsthand experience of what it might be like to practice a particular religion,” said Garavaglia. “But I think they also benefited from the discussion about culture, politics, and even seeing how Americans are viewed from other parts of the world.”

Last year, students joined the Zooms individually from home. This year, teachers had a 45-minute interview with four to six students from the foreign school in a general overview about themselves, traditions and faith life and then summarized the call to SLUH students in an Edpuzzle beforehand to cover basics. After watching the video, students from all of the World Religions sections gathered in the commons to attend the zoom discussions together during Studium periods.

“This year we experimented with having all the SLUH students in the same room as a group,” said Garavaglia. “Then (Director of Global Ed Rob) Chura and I would meet with the students from the virtual exchange school and interview them about the basics of who they are, what their year in school is, what they're interested in, their favorite classes, and then I asked them a number of different questions about their religious and cultural backgrounds.”

There were five Zoom discussions this year. SLUH students heard from Russian Orthodox students in Russia; Roman Catholics in Ireland; Hindus in India; Buddhists, Daoists, and Confucianists in Taiwan; and Coptic Christians and Muslims in Egypt. 

“I really enjoyed the Ireland Zoom,” said senior Donovan Meachem. “It opened up my eyes to other aspects of Christianity that we hadn’t learned about before.”

“I think the meeting I got the most out of was probably the one we did with Egyptian students who were Christian and Muslim,” said senior Lucas Navarro. “The reason that I got the most out of that one was because going into it, my fellow students and I knew what to ask. The problem with the earlier meetings was that it was kind of hard to know what the important questions to ask were.”

These connections with schools across the globe were made possible by Chura and his work as the Director of Global Education. 

“We have a huge network in the global Jesuit community,” Chura said. “As our contacts develop more and more, they put us in touch with a lot of people.”

In addition to the Zoom meetings, students also had the opportunity, as in many past years, to hear from in-person speakers in class. This included a Hindu man, a Buddhist priest, a Muslim woman, and a group of Jewish students.

“Those in a lot of ways were more informative than the Zoom calls,” said Navarro. “The first guest speaker talked about his own recent conversion, his own experience with the Hindu faith. He was more knowledgeable about that and was able to answer our questions much better about specific things he was talking to us about.”

One element of the class that has still not returned since Covid is the field trip to a non-Catholic religious location in St. Louis. Garavaglia hopes to reintroduce the field trip next school year along with continuing the successful Zoom program.

“What I would like to do is foster some additional shared experiences with my students and the students on the other end, whether it's working on a project together or just cultivating more discussion outside of the Zoom, like one-on-one conversations. I’m trying to brainstorm about some of the ways to do that,” said Garavaglia.