Bringing Students Into the Story The vision Behind Walking Together in Faith and Reconciliation

In April 2025, the director of education for Prince Albert Catholic Schools invited teachers to apply for a grant through the Saskatchewan Ministry of Education. The grant was intended to support technology and innovation in the classroom.

When I first heard about it, I did not immediately have an idea.

I decided to pray about it.

I asked God that, if it was His will for me to receive this grant, He would inspire me with the right idea and open the doors that needed to be opened. I did not want to force something simply because funding was available. I wanted the project to grow out of the work I was already doing with students and from something that could genuinely enrich their education. As I prayed and thought about it, an idea began to form.

Helping Students Explore the Deeper Questions

I teach Catholic Studies to high school students in Grades 10, 11, and 12. Throughout those three years, we explore many of the deeper questions that people wrestle with throughout their lives.

How do we heal from the wounds we carry?

How do our past experiences affect the choices we make?

Why can forgiveness be so difficult?

What does reconciliation really require?

Why do we sometimes know what is right but still struggle to do it?

Can suffering destroy a person, or can it somehow become part of a journey toward growth, meaning, and healing?

These are not simply academic questions. They are questions that affect families, friendships, communities, and the direction of our lives.

In Grade 12, I teach from St. Paul’s Letter to the Galatians, especially his teaching about the struggle between the flesh and the Spirit. That struggle is not always dramatic. Sometimes it is found in the small choices of everyday life. One part of us may want comfort, anger, revenge, pride, or immediate satisfaction. At the same time, the Spirit may be calling us toward patience, courage, forgiveness, self-control, generosity, and love.

We also study the teachings of Jesus on repentance, mercy, forgiveness, and reconciliation. I try to help students connect those teachings with what psychology and philosophy tell us about the human person.

We explore ideas from Sigmund Freud, Alfred Adler, Viktor Frankl, Immanuel Kant, Aristotle, and Emmanuel Levinas. We also examine the wisdom of St. Augustine and St. John Paul II. These thinkers certainly do not agree on everything. They come from different times, traditions, and ways of understanding the world. However, each of them gives students something to consider about freedom, suffering, responsibility, conscience, relationships, human dignity, and the choices that shape who we become.

As I thought about the grant, I began to wonder how I could help students experience some of these ideas in a different way.

What if they could do more than read about faith, healing, pilgrimage, and reconciliation?

What if they could feel as though they were standing in meaningful places beneath the open Saskatchewan sky?

What if they could listen to Elders, faith leaders, and other people share their stories in the places where those stories were rooted?

What if technology could help bring students into the story?

That was the beginning of Walking Together in Faith and Reconciliation.

Creating a Virtual Pilgrimage

The idea was to create a series of virtual pilgrimages and sacred-site experiences for students.

Using virtual reality headsets, specialized cameras, audio equipment, and 360-degree filming technology, students would be able to look around a location as though they were actually standing there.They would not simply be watching a video on a screen. The experience would surround them.

My hope is to take students into Saskatchewan landscapes, pilgrimage sites, churches, shrines, and other meaningful places. I also hope to include the voices of people who can speak about faith, suffering, forgiveness, Indigenous spirituality, reconciliation, and hope.

Of course, virtual reality cannot create reconciliation. It cannot replace relationships, honest conversations, prayer, Scripture, good teaching, or the difficult work of truly listening to another person. Technology is only a tool. But sometimes a tool can open a door.

Virtual reality may help students become more present to a place and to the person speaking. It may help them slow down, look around, listen carefully, and experience a story in a way that feels more personal than simply reading a paragraph in a textbook.

My goal is not for students to finish the experience and only talk about how impressive the technology was. My hope is that the technology will gradually fade into the background and allow the people, places, and stories to become the focus.

Receiving the Grant

In November 2025, I learned that the proposal had been approved.

The project had received a grant that paid for a class set of virtual reality head sets, virtual reality filming equipment and part of a mobile computer lab for students. I was excited, grateful, and honestly a little overwhelmed. The vision had been accepted, but now I had to figure out how to bring it to life.

The Prince Albert Daily Herald later reported on the announcement following a Prince Albert Catholic School Division board meeting. The article described Walking Together in Faith and Reconciliation as a virtual pilgrimage and sacred-site experience focused on faith and Truth and Reconciliation. The newspaper also reported that Saskatchewan’s Minister of Education had included handwritten congratulations with the approval letter and thanked me for undertaking such a meaningful project. Because the project was included as part of a longer article about the school board meeting, the grant announcement appears farther down the page under the heading “École St. Mary High School teacher approved for Teacher Innovation Fund project.”

Read the Prince Albert Daily Herald coverage of the grant announcement.

Receiving the grant felt like one of those doors I had prayed about beginning to open.

But an open door does not mean the work on the other side will be easy.

Becoming a Student Again

From December until the end of the school year in June, I spent a great deal of time researching, planning, ordering equipment, testing systems, and troubleshooting problems.

I researched virtual reality headsets, specialized cameras and lenses, computers, audio equipment, storage systems, and a 360-degree drone. I also had to think about practical questions.

How do you safely charge and store an entire classroom set of virtual reality headsets?

How do you keep all the cables and accessories organized? What kind of computer is needed to edit large 8k dual fish eye virtual reality video files? How do you record clear audio while filming in 360 degrees? How do you create movement that feels natural without making the viewer uncomfortable? Nearly every answer seemed to lead to several more questions.

I designed and built a cabinet to store, organize, and charge the headsets and supporting equipment. I worked through software issues, equipment compatibility, storage needs, charging requirements, and the many small details that had to come together before filming could even begin.

Some things worked right away. Other things required hours of research, testing, frustration, and starting over. After more than twenty-five years of teaching, I found myself becoming a student again.

I think that has already been one of the lessons of this project.

Sometimes God gives us an idea before we know exactly how we are going to accomplish it. We may see the direction without being able to see every step.

We simply have to begin, remain willing to learn, ask for help when we need it, make mistakes, solve the next problem, and keep moving forward.

The plan is to complete much of the filming during the summer of 2026. I hope to begin editing the first films in August and September, with a projected classroom launch in October.

The Timing I Could Not Have Planned

There have already been several moments during this project when the timing seemed uncanny. One afternoon in July, I was in Saskatoon visiting family and attending a medical appointment. We were expecting company at home, so I wanted to leave Saskatoon as early as possible. Instead, everything seemed to take longer than it should have. As the day went on, I became increasingly frustrated. I left much later than I had planned.

On the drive home, I passed the Millennium Cross Shrine near Wakaw. It was one of the locations I hoped to document for the virtual reality project. I wanted to film the shrine using both the virtual reality camera and the 360-degree drone. I also wanted to interview the farmer whose vision had led to the shrine being created. There was just one problem. I did not know his name. I did not have his contact information.

I still needed to find out who he was, contact him, explain the project, ask permission to fly the drone, and see whether he would be willing to share the story of the shrine.

As I approached the site that afternoon, I noticed two people there.

The farmer who had the original vision for the Millennium Cross Shrine was outside cutting grass with his daughter. I stopped and introduced myself. We talked about the virtual reality project, and they graciously agreed to participate. I received permission to fly the drone at the shrine, and they agreed to be interviewed about its history and the remarkable story behind its creation.

Had everything in Saskatoon gone according to my schedule, I would have driven past the shrine much earlier. They probably would not have been there. I had spent part of that day feeling irritated because I thought I was running behind. Looking back, perhaps I was exactly on time.

Trusting the Doors That Open

I do not believe that having faith means every plan will work perfectly or that every obstacle will disappear. This project has already included plenty of hard work, uncertainty, technical problems, mistakes, and frustration.

I also do not believe that every idea we have must automatically be God’s will simply because we want it to happen. Discernment requires prayer, patience, humility, responsibility, and a willingness to accept that God’s answer may sometimes be no.

But I am learning once again that when we sincerely place something before God, we may begin to notice doors opening in ways we could not have arranged ourselves.

Sometimes a door closes and redirects us.

Sometimes a person appears at exactly the right time. Sometimes an unexpected delay places us exactly where we need to be. When I first prayed about the grant, I asked God to inspire me with an idea and open the doors if this project was part of His will for me.

At that point, I could not see the months of research ahead. I could not see the cameras, headsets, equipment, filming locations, interviews, and stories that would eventually become part of the journey. I could only take the first step.

Over the coming months, I hope to share more of this experience through Under the Prairie Sky. I want to share some of the places we visit, the people we meet, the stories entrusted to us, the beauty we capture, the challenges behind the filming, and the lessons I learn along the way. However, I hope these articles will be about more than the creation of a virtual reality project.

Most people reading this will never need to operate a 360-degree camera, fly a drone, or create a virtual pilgrimage. But all of us have experienced moments when we felt called to begin something without knowing exactly where it would lead. We have all faced delays, closed doors, unexpected encounters, discouragement, and moments when we had to decide whether to trust God enough to take another step.

My hope is that, as I share this journey, readers may begin to recognize some of those same moments in their own lives.

Perhaps an interruption is not always an inconvenience.

Perhaps a delay is not always wasted time.

Perhaps the person who unexpectedly crosses our path is there for a reason.

Perhaps God is quietly opening a door, but we still have to be willing to walk through it.

I hope these reflections encourage us to pay greater attention to the quiet work of God in our families, our parish, our community, and the ordinary circumstances of our lives.

My hope is that Walking Together in Faith and Reconciliation will help students encounter important stories with greater empathy, attention, and openness. But I already have a feeling that creating this project is going to teach me just as much as I hope it teaches them. Perhaps, by sharing the journey, some of those lessons will belong to all of us.

Warren Kirilenko

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