“Christian formation embraces the entire person: spiritual, intellectual, emotional, social, physical.” (para. 4.2) So begins the recent apostolic letter, Disegnare Nuove Mappe Di Speranza (Drawing New Maps of Hope), by Pope Leo XIV (2025), emphasizing the centrality of holistic formation for educators and students alike in our global Catholic schools. At the Roche Center for Catholic Education at Boston College, we heed this call for holistic formation in the intentional design of our programs and the ways we coach those Catholic school educators and leaders joining us in our mission to work as a community to build excellent and equitable Catholic PreK-12 schools (Roche Center for Catholic Education).
The communal and spiritual elements do not exist in isolation; they are interwoven with the intellectual, particularly as we emphasize accompaniment and cura personalis as core beliefs undergirding the formation experience highlighted in our framework for whole-child education.
In my role at the Roche Center, I have the privilege of accompanying cohorts of Catholic school teacher-leaders (TLs) through an experience of holistic adult formation in our Empowering Educators Teacher Leadership Academy. TLs begin their formation with an intensive, in-person summer institute on the campus of Boston College. We facilitate rigorous learning sessions exploring our key competencies, including developing a vision for leadership, supporting adult learners, and leveraging data. But what arguably creates the true value of an in-person start to the program are the communal and spiritual elements. We grow together as a learning community through shared meals, prayer, and Mass. The communal and spiritual elements do not exist in isolation; they are interwoven with the intellectual, particularly as we emphasize accompaniment and cura personalis as core beliefs undergirding the formation experience highlighted in our framework for whole-child education (Wyttenbach et al., 2025). Cura personalis, translated from the Latin as “care of the whole person” or “care for the individual person” (Geger, 2014) has great significance in Catholic and Jesuit education (Warner, Wyttenbach, & McMahon, 2023), and has served as a useful touchpoint for adult formation in our Roche Center program design and implementation. For instance, inspired by cura personalis and attention to holistic formation, we incorporate the following into our teacher leadership summer institute: TLs generate a list of learning commitments (Forman, Stosich, & Bocala, 2021) that set and sustain the conditions for collective learning; TLs express hopes and fears as they prepare to engage in teacher leadership work in their schools; and TLs incorporate regular dialogue and inquiry into their collaboration, an approach that resonates across the Jesuit educational experience (e.g., Cully, 2024).
After the in-person summer institute at Boston College, the remainder of the teacher leadership programming throughout the school year occurs virtually. The TL community gathers online in a whole-group setting once a month to go deeper into a teacher leadership competency area like leading teams, dedicating time to discussing implementation of the strategy in their practice and receiving feedback from their peers. Additionally, TLs meet monthly for 1-on-1 virtual coaching with a designated coach (including myself) who supports them in their teacher leadership growth by reviewing and discussing their school-based teacher leadership goals and progress, often through the work of leading a team, such as a grade level or content area team. It is in the context of the 1-on-1 coaching where feedback is informed by a distinct approach.
When reflecting on how I “walk” with TL participants in coaching moments through a shared Zoom window, I found that another line from Pope Leo XIV’s recent apostolic letter (2025) offered a useful framework to illustrate my intent for how I encounter TL participants and provide feedback: “Technical updates are not enough [for ongoing Catholic school educator formation]: it is necessary to cultivate a heart that listens, a gaze that encourages, and an intelligence that discerns” (Pope Leo XIV, para. 5.2). As a coach, I seek to listen, discern, and encourage, while attending to cura personalis.
When coaching, it can be tempting to jump right to “fixing” the perceived issue being shared. It might seem efficient and effective to be direct, to tell a novice or struggling educator what they are doing wrong and what practice should be implemented to improve teaching and learning. While there are coaching models that adopt such approaches, coaching animated by cura personalis call us to something more.
When coaching, it can be tempting to jump right to “fixing” the perceived issue being shared.
Cura personalis, or attending to the care of the whole person, means that I need to be humble, to listen and learn more about the context, the people involved (teachers and students depending on the situation), and the topic at hand (also related to questions offered in Hargreaves & O’Connor, 2019). In showing care, I strive to adopt an inquiry stance, moving from merely making an instructional recommendation based on best practices from a “master teacher” to instead explore what Cochran-Smith and Lytle (1999) called “knowledge-of-practice.” Through this process, educators, and in my case TLs, are challenged to move beyond superficial quick-fixes to “[work] together to investigate their own assumptions, their own teaching and curriculum development, and the policies and practices of their own schools and communities” (p. 279). Taking such deliberate and intentional steps to interrogate one’s own practice to go deeper into a dilemma can be challenging and time-consuming. But it is essential if we desire to put cura personalis into practice through an inquiry-based approach to coaching and feedback.
An imaginative case may help to illustrate this idea:
Let’s picture a scene where I am coaching a TL serving as an English teacher content area team lead in a Catholic high school. Connecting their team goals to the school’s mission and instructional vision, the TL is working to have their team consider what student engagement looks like in their English classrooms, specifically through opportunities for students to talk, lead discussion, ask questions of one another, and actively drive the learning. The team determines that they will explore this issue by looking at talk-time in their English classes, investigating how often teachers are talking in their classes (e.g., providing direct instruction, offering leading questions, or intervening quickly to provide “correct” answers) compared to student talking (e.g., facilitating student-led discussion or allowing students to have time to ask questions of one another).
In our coaching session, the TL shares that their team is experiencing difficulty having the intended discussions to explore talk-time because one teacher colleague appears resistant and actively disrupts attempts to engage in discussion. The TL says that the colleague tells the team that students shouldn’t have more talk-time because students waste time when they lead discussions and don’t land on the correct answers. Further, the colleague says that their own team meeting time could be better spent working on lesson plans. When the colleague makes these comments, the whole team feels deflated and has difficulty moving forward with their work.
As a coach, I could jump in to “fix” the situation through direct feedback to the TL. I could cite research and offer practical suggestions grounded in adult learning principles (e.g., Aguilar, 2016). But I instead choose to listen, discern, and encourage. To listen and discern, I can take my inquiry stance to ask questions that will allow both me and the TL to go deeper into the presented dilemma. I could ask questions, such as: “Has this colleague appeared to be resistant to team work in the past?” “When does this colleague seem joyful and engaged as a member of the team?” Additionally, I could ask questions of the TL, including: “How do you feel when this colleague disrupts team time?” “What do you think might be the underlying reasons for why the colleague appears resistant?” “What steps were taken to establish a positive learning community for your team before engaging in the work of exploring talk-time?” These questions may lead to specific suggestions for how to respond to the situation—such as reestablishing learning commitments or reviewing adult learning principles—but the process of listening and discerning means that we center “knowledge-of-practice” to move beyond the simplistic answer that the colleague is merely resistant.
As a coach, I could jump in to “fix” the situation through direct feedback to the TL. I could cite research and offer practical suggestions grounded in adult learning principles (e.g., Aguilar, 2016). But I instead choose to listen, discern, and encourage.
By taking the time to explore the perceptions and perspectives of both the TL and their colleague, I as the coach strive to listen and discern, while encouraging the TL to do the same to seek to better understand the dilemma. Instead of direct feedback to “fix,” we engage in a collective effort to explore the issue holistically, thinking about the people, the context, and the conditions. We consider how the TL feels in the moment, how the colleague might feel, and what prior experiences might inform those feelings and responses. We consider the whole person and how care for the whole person—and the collective team—can promote a sense of fulfillment leading to a thoughtful examination of teaching and learning aligned with the school’s mission and vision. By attending to cura personalis for themselves as educators, they in turn are then better equipped to attend to the cura personalis for their students.
Instead of direct feedback to “fix,” we engage in a collective effort to explore the issue holistically, thinking about the people, the context, and the conditions.
This manner of coaching does not happen accidentally. The holistic formation experience of the in-person summer institute at Boston College, serving as the backbone for a virtual coaching session like the one presented, creates the conditions of trust, common language, and good will towards one another that allows for deep inquiry that is both authentic and productive. Seen through a lens of faith, we see the coaching approach as a way to live out our shared mission, affirming the holistic formation of Catholic school educators that moves beyond “technical updates.” By curating these moments of adult formation, Catholic school educators then serve in the critical roles of forming their students, providing similar inquiry-based learning experiences through their own process of listening, discerning, and encouraging.
Aguilar, E. (2016). The art of coaching teams: Building resilient communities that transform schools. Jossey-Bass.
Cochran-Smith, M., & Lytle, S. L. (1999). Relationships of knowledge and practice: Teacher learning in communities. Review of Research in Education, 24, 249-305.
Cully, K. R. (2024). Teachers as students: Modeling a depth of lifelong learning. Ignatian Pedagogy in Practice: A Forum for Educators in Jesuit Schools, 1. https://www.ignatius.edu/academics/cip/cip-publications/ignatian-pedagogy-in-practice
Forman, M. L., Stosich, E. L., & Bocala, C. (2021). The Internal coherence framework: Creating the conditions for continuous improvement in schools. Harvard Education Press.
Geger, B. T. 2014. “Cura personalis: Some Ignatian inspirations.” Jesuit Higher Education: A Journal, 3(2): 6–20.
Hargreaves, A., & O’Connor, M. T. (2019). The 4 B’s: How to adapt other people’s practices and make them stick. The Learning Professional: The Learning Forward Journal, 40(3), 54-62.
Pope Leo XIV. Disegnare Nuove Mappe Di Speranza (Drawing New Maps of Hope). Apostolic Letter. (2025). https://www.vatican.va/content/leo-xiv/en/apost_letters/documents/20251027-disegnare-nuove-mappe.html
Roche Center for Catholic Education. About the Roche Center. (2025). https://www.bc.edu/content/bc-web/schools/lynch-school/sites/roche/About.html
Warner, M. O., Wyttenbach, M., & McMahon, M. (2023). Pope Francis’ vision and whole child education: Exploring the foundational beliefs of cura personalis and accompaniment. The Review of Faith & International Affairs, 21(1), 15–27.
Wyttenbach, M., McMahon, M., Reyes, J., Boyle, M., Ward, K., & Berges, V. (2025). The playbook for whole-child education in U.S. Catholic schools. National Catholic Educational Association (NCEA).
