Our courses

The Introductory Seminar is a dedicated way into a first vision of the richness that marks the inspiration and history of the Society of Jesus' educational ministry in schools. Content and working methods invite participants to engage fully and to feel part of the wider network of Ignatian colleges. The Introductory Seminar is organised in two distinct stages over one school year and is intended for newly appointed teachers.

The themes of the first stage open onto the foundations of Ignatian pedagogy. The spiritual experience of Ignatius of Loyola becomes a reference model for understanding a Pedagogical-Didactic Paradigm enriched by the Society's tradition and by innovation across the ages. Not only the study of specific texts, but deepening through interactive dynamics characterises CeFAEGI seminars. Teachers' contribution is essential to the workshop approach that addresses themes such as the shared mission of Jesuits and laity, or the exchange of rich and original teaching experiences.

In the second stage, work focuses on the teacher's reading of context and on lessons prepared for the occasion and tried in class, examining them through the “stages” of the Ignatian Pedagogical Paradigm: context, experience, reflection, action and evaluation.

Systematic seminars are the second level of formation for teachers. They strengthen professional identity and knowledge and practice of Ignatian pedagogy. Here pedagogical lines “enter” the classroom, become teaching method, transmit content and values, and enact renewal and creativity.

The pathway runs over four years in a systematic, continuous way: it is for recently appointed teachers who have completed the Introductory Seminar, and also for experienced teachers who wish to rework depth and systematicity for their teaching practice with others. It comprises four steps linked to the Ignatian Pedagogical Paradigm (IPP): experience, reflection, action, evaluation.

Like the Introductory Seminar, the Systematic Seminars cycle is residential, generally lasting from Wednesday to Saturday.

It belongs to the Society of Jesus' tradition to form the whole person of the student through the disciplines, seen as carriers of important questions of meaning and as expressions of values to be interiorised in building a better world. Reflecting on the formative value of the disciplines and practising a methodology that brings these aspects to light — not only content — is therefore essential. CeFAEGI offers seminars on the formative value of the disciplines with particular attention to interdisciplinarity, developing major cross-cutting questions that involve a plurality of subjects.

In recent years, seminars titled “Art and spirituality” and on disciplines and integral formation of the person “Faith and justice” have been fruitfully organised in several editions. Over time they have been enriched by the horizons of reading and re-reading Pope Francis' encyclical “Laudato Si'” and, with a dynamic workshop approach, have become occasions to elaborate a vertical curriculum attentive to these dimensions and able to evidence the life competences described in the Ignatian graduate profile.

There are formative occasions to explore the interior and spiritual dimension of teaching: the “Spiritual Exercises” are the heart of an Ignatian work. This experience is foundational for the formation of Jesuits and of lay people who share responsibility for the educational mission. How to bring lay teachers closer to understanding this dimension? Two types of proposals currently respond to requests and needs experienced in the field.

The Colloquium experience: a residential methodology led by a team of one Jesuit and two or three lay teachers, reworking a more explicitly existential and spiritual reflection on the teaching profession as vocation. It unfolds in two stages and is for teachers who need a time of reflection not yet oriented to the full methodology of the Spiritual Exercises.

The Spiritual Exercises can be offered in various forms adapted to the situation of the retreatants; in the form proposed today they are a multi-day spiritual experience that allows participants to understand Ignatius' way of seeking God's will for one's life, and to appropriate, by living it, the methodology indicated in the book of the Spiritual Exercises. They are organised annually by CeFAEGI or by school leadership and are offered to teachers, leaders and collaborators, seeking the widest possible participation.