Supporting Those Who Educate: Why Teachers, Too, Keep Learning.

Every day, a teacher walks into the classroom to accompany new students in their growth and learning. They prepare lessons, ask questions, observe, listen, assess and encourage. And it is precisely while teaching that they continue to learn: from students who change, from questions they had not anticipated, from difficulties that require new answers, and from a society that is constantly transforming the way we communicate, learn and build relationships.

October 5, World Teachers’ Day, offers an opportunity to recognize the value of a profession that is essential to the future of education. In 2026, the international observance places particular emphasis on the need to protect, support and enhance the teaching profession in a rapidly changing world.

But valuing teachers also means giving them the opportunity to continue growing. Those who accompany the formation of others, in turn, need spaces in which to question themselves, exchange ideas and renew the way they educate.

A profession that changes with the world

Being a teacher today means engaging with transformations that are deeply reshaping schools. Digital technologies and artificial intelligence are changing access to knowledge; classrooms are becoming increasingly diverse in terms of experiences, cultures and needs; new forms of vulnerability are emerging in young people’s lives; and the skills required by society are evolving rapidly.

In this context, professional development is essential. Yet the formation of an educator cannot be reduced to learning new tools, methodologies or technologies. There is an even deeper question: how does our way of educating change when the world our students are called to inhabit is changing?

Continuing to learn therefore also means revisiting one’s own experience, questioning past choices, recognizing what works and what needs to be transformed. It means accepting that the experience accumulated over the years does not remove the need to keep learning.

In the educational tradition of the Society of Jesus, the teacher is not seen merely as the custodian of knowledge to be transmitted. Teachers accompany students along their path of growth, contributing to the formation of the whole person. Ignatian pedagogy places particular emphasis on the context in which learning takes place, on the student’s experience, on reflection about what is lived, and on the possibility of translating what has been learned into action.

This process concerns the student, but it inevitably involves the teacher as well. Educators are called to observe what happens, reflect on the way they act and, when necessary, change it. Reflection on practice thus becomes an integral part of the teaching profession.

Professional development means revisiting experience

One of the most significant aspects of Ignatian formation for educators is precisely this reflective dimension: the ability to return to experience in order to understand it more deeply.

A successful lesson, a difficulty encountered with a class, a conversation with a family, or an unexpected question from a student can all become opportunities for learning if there is a space in which they can be revisited. From this perspective, experience alone is not enough: it is reflection on experience that gives it meaning and transforms it into new educational choices.

This dynamic is deeply connected to the Ignatian pedagogical paradigm: experience, reflection and action are not isolated moments, but parts of a process that accompanies growth — including the growth of adults.

Professional development, moreover, does not take place only on an individual level. A school grows when educators have the opportunity to share experiences, questions, difficulties and good practices. Exchange among colleagues helps teachers move beyond the sense of isolation that can sometimes accompany their work and can transform a practice developed in a single classroom into a resource for an entire educational community.

This is also why, in the vision of Fondazione Gesuiti Educazione, educator formation takes on a networked dimension. Through CeFAEGI.EUM, the Jesuit Training Centre for Educational Activity, progressive and ongoing programmes are offered both to newly appointed teachers and to more experienced educators. Seminars, in-depth sessions and programmes on Ignatian pedagogy and methodology become opportunities not only to acquire tools, but also to build a shared educational language and to feel part of the same mission.

A tradition that continues to question itself

Teacher formation holds a central place in the Jesuit educational tradition because the identity of a school does not live only in documents, programmes or statements of principle. It takes shape every day through the people who inhabit classrooms and build relationships with students.

Father Peter-Hans Kolvenbach reminded us that, in a Jesuit school, responsibility for students’ moral and intellectual formation ultimately rests more on the person of the teacher than on programmes or activities. It is an important responsibility, but one that cannot be lived as an individual task: it requires accompaniment, exchange and a professional community capable of supporting those who educate.

The Guidelines for Ignatian Formation of the Foundation identify lifelong formation as an essential dimension of educators’ development and encourage self-directed learning, self-evaluation and reflection on one’s own ways of understanding and acting.

In this sense, tradition is not something to be repeated, but something with which we must continue to engage in order to understand how to respond to the educational questions of the present.

Perhaps one of the most valuable qualities of a teacher is not always having the right answer, but retaining the willingness to keep asking questions: what is this student really experiencing? Why does a strategy that worked yesterday no longer work today? What can I learn from what happened in class? Is there something in the way I teach that I can look at from a different perspective?

These questions do not weaken the educator’s authority. On the contrary, they emphasize the value of relationship at the heart of education and reflect a professionalism that never considers itself definitively complete.

Because teaching certainly means passing on what we know, but it also means continuing to allow ourselves to be transformed by the encounters, experiences and questions that each new generation brings with it.