The Role of Religious Education Teacher Post-Covid-19: Building Spirituality, In Addition to Religiosity

Abstract

As pandemic hits hard in families, their children and adolescents face stress as an impact of lockdown, parenting pressure, household chaos, and inability to play with friends. The pandemic has caused stress, anxiety, and depression in children and adolescents both during and after the pandemic. When parents are experiencing stress and other negative emotions, children and adolescents need another source of support such as their religious education teachers at school. Teachers can help students build faith and resilience to face stress during and post-pandemic, as spirituality and religion have been proven to help people cope with stress. However, there is a difference between teaching religion as a course subject and building spirituality. Aside from building religiosity, the teacher also needs to build spirituality. Religiosity is defined as a set of beliefs and knowledge on a specific religion, while spirituality is an interaction with the Divine in day-to-day life. This paper aims to research the role of religious education teachers in building spirituality among children and adolescents to cope with the stress and trauma of the pandemic. Using the literature research method, the writer seeks to explore the role of the teacher, learning methodology, and topics employed when building spirituality in students. The current research focuses on various learning methods in achieving educational goals during the pandemic and the role of religiosity/spirituality in coping with the pandemic. However, there is no discussion on the distinction between teaching religiosity and spirituality. This research will benefit religious education teachers in forming their courses and interactions to develop students' spirituality during and after the pandemic.