Month: March 2024

Teaching Vocational Exploration in the Biology Classroom

The idea of vocational exploration is golden. But to be able to explore it meaningfully with first-year students who just want to study biology, we must help them gain clarity on what it entails.

The title of this post may make you pause, first to consider what it means to teach vocational exploration in biology, and then to consider how it could be done in your courses. In the undergraduate biology classroom, you may have to explain the expansive meaning of vocation as well as give students a reason to explore vocation “at this time and in this place.” Most students in biology seem either to be undecided about what to do next or to have pre-determined ideas, such as attend medical school. For this reason, we might be tempted not to consider other vocational opportunities that could resonate with the students’ natural talents.

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Sarah Bassin on Holy Envy

The latest episode of the Callings podcast features Erin VanLaningham and John Barton speaking with Rabbi Sarah Bassin.

The latest episode of the Callings podcast features Erin VanLaningham and John Barton speaking with Rabbi Sarah Bassin. She serves as the director of clergy and congregations for the nonprofit HIAS (originally the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society), the world’s oldest refugee agency. Previously, she was the associate rabbi at Temple Emanuel of Beverly Hills, focused on congregation-based justice work, as well as the founding executive director of NewGround: A Muslim-Jewish Partnership for Change.

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Vocation in the World Language Classroom

As our campuses and communities become increasingly multilingual, we ought to lift up the language classroom as a privileged space for vocational reflection where our responsibilities to the world, to each other, and to ourselves might crosspollinate in ways that honor our callings as much as they shape the future of language instruction.

Paris, La Défense viewed from Fondation Louis Vuitton
Photo by the author

The language classroom provides ample occasion to cultivate vocational reflection. As a lifelong learner and educator with over 15 years of experience teaching French, I can attest to the ways in which language acquisition is inextricable from learning about ourselves, crafting our stories, connecting with others, and discerning how to live an intentional life. Take the example of a beginning language program, in which courses are commonly structured around topics of everyday relevance such as friends and family, education and professions, pastimes, and holidays and traditions. Self-reflection and self-authorship are embedded in the program because learning a language is, in effect, learning to live, communicate, and move in the world in and through this language.

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Assessing Character Strengths: Resources from Positive Psychology

Part of our work as educators is to help students recognize and appreciate their natural strengths so that they can share them with others.

Before starting my first semester as a professor, my department held a retreat that included discussion of our results from the VIA Inventory of Strengths (also called the VIA Survey). To my relief, my top strengths included love of learning, curiosity, and teamwork—all excellent characteristics of a new academic. They also included love and humor, however, and even though those felt accurate, I cringed with dismay. As someone who falls prey to imposter syndrome (see my previous blog post), these characteristics seemed unprofessional and “fluffy.” I didn’t want to be seen as a joker or not rigorous. Since that retreat six years ago, I have learned that these two strengths are invaluable to my work. My compassion is evident to my students, and my humor can appropriately bring levity to even challenging situations.

Many students struggle to identify their strengths and to communicate them to others, which I suspect is partly because they cannot always see the value of their strengths. This can happen because our strengths are so natural to us that they may not seem unique or consequential. Part of our work as educators is to help students recognize and appreciate their natural strengths so that they can share them with others. As a resource provided by the VIA Institute on Character (formerly Values in Action Institute), the VIA Survey is a free online tool that can help.

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