Catholic Classroom Communities During Remote Teaching

In this COVID-era study, Catholic school teachers report the challenges that theyexperienced in supporting classroom communities during remote instruction, as well asthe strategies that they enacted to address such challenges and make robustrelationships 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 theyparticipated in weekly Freirian culture circles — structured dialogues designed to helpteachers identify problems of equity and collectively devise appropriate responses. Theteachers found that classroom community was hindered by a lack of in-person affordances,socioemotional stressors related to the pandemic, struggles to engage students, andstructures of hybrid teaching. In response, teachers used the culture circles to createand/or share strategies for supporting remote classroom communities, such as classroommeetings and smallgroup collaboration. Teachers recognized that efforts to developclassroom communities were intimately connected to commitments to equity.