Insights and Conversations from the Network for Vocation in Undergraduate Education (NetVUE)
The author reflects on a journey with his autistic children, emphasizing the virtues of wisdom and humility. Despite his initial misguided decisions during a trip to the Carrowkeel Passage Tombs in Ireland, he learns valuable lessons from his children. Their insights illustrate how wisdom is cultivated through shared experiences and the acknowledgment of limits.
A series of posts about virtue, autism, vocation, and the teaching of history.
Teaching courage, my children echo a call to presence; teaching moderation, a call to self-examination; teaching justice, a call to persistent conversation. The call that is echoed to me by my autistic children with regard to wisdom is perhaps the most important of all.
Continue reading “Echoed Vocation IV: A Call to Wisdom”This series of posts explores the author’s experiences with teaching virtues in connection with his two autistic children. The focus is on the virtue of justice and the challenges of teaching it, as well as the need for understanding different perspectives on justice. The author emphasizes the importance of persistence in nurturing a vision of justice.
A series of posts about virtue, autism, vocation, and the teaching of history.
In the first two installments of this series, I explored how the virtues I teach are echoed as callings to me through my two autistic children. As I teach courage, they call me to be present with them in their fear. As I teach moderation, they call me to examine myself rather than judge others. The third echo, justice, is the focus of this post.
Continue reading “Echoed Vocation III: A Call to Justice”Ultimately, the call of temperance is a call to self-examination, for each of us knows the things that consume us personally. Moderation is best judged from the inside.
A series of posts about virtue, autism, vocation, and the teaching of history.
My first exploration of the echoing of vocation between my students and my children suggested ways in which the latter demonstrate exceptional courage. For this second exploration, which will consider the call to moderation, their example for me is more problematic—like the virtue itself.
Continue reading “Echoed Vocation II: A Call to Moderation”As I call to my children, I hear an echoed call from them, uncontained and unpredictable and unsettling, that reverberates back into my teaching.
A series of posts about virtue, autism, vocation, and the teaching of history.
With this opportunity to reflect in four parts for Vocation Matters, I want to explore something that I have not really noticed until recently: how much my children have taught me about vocation and about the virtues. These posts will describe an echoed vocation. As I call to my children, I hear an echoed call from them, uncontained and unpredictable and unsettling, that reverberates back into my teaching. I write these posts with their knowledge and approval.
I have spoken and written about my calling as a father to my two children, Kathleen and Peter, for many years. That calling has been informed by my calling as a teacher of history, part of which involves presenting the virtues clearly and winsomely to my students. The past not only offers examples of virtue (and vice) but it also calls us to virtues as rememberers of the past. I have tried to teach virtue to my children as well with attention and creativity because they both have autism. In doing so, I have discovered both their unique challenges and their unique insights.
Continue reading “Echoed Vocation I: A Call to Courage”Often I’ve found that I carry aspects of the teacher’s call to my children, and—as I’ll explore in my upcoming series of posts—my parenting informs my pedagogy in return.
A series of posts about virtue, autism, vocation, and the teaching of history.
Vocations inform each other, and two of mine seem to be in constant dialogue, deep calling to deep: teaching and parenting. Often I’ve found that I carry aspects of the teacher’s call to my children, and—as I’ll explore in my upcoming series of posts—my parenting informs my pedagogy in return. I’m sure this is a common experience, but mine has a twist that keeps surprising me. This is because both of my children have autism.
It has been easy to see the ways that my teaching has affected my parenting, and Kathleen and Peter would probably attest with a roll of the eyes that, yes, Dad drags us to places he likes and talks a lot. There exists a video of me explaining a thatched roof to them in which they wander off while I keep talking. It’s on brand.
More surprising has been how much my call as a parent has shaped my teaching and how much my children shape me as a person. I realize how much I learn from them. Specifically, they have helped me understand something that I teach in my history courses: the four cardinal virtues.
Continue reading “Introduction: Teaching Virtue and Vocation in History “Many readers will immediately associate the name Frederick Buechner with a passage from Wishful Thinking that they know by heart: “The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.” It’s a rich sentence, full of possibility, and has been foundational for many of us in helping students through vocational discernment. But Buechner said a great deal more about vocation, whether in essays or fiction or memoir, and I’d like to explore his wider vision briefly as we mourn his death on August 15, 2022, at the age of 96.
Many readers will immediately associate the name Frederick Buechner with a passage from Wishful Thinking that they know by heart: “The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.” It’s a rich sentence, full of possibility, and has been foundational for many of us in helping students through vocational discernment. But Buechner said a great deal more about vocation, whether in essays or fiction or memoir, and I’d like to explore his wider vision briefly as we mourn his death on August 15, 2022, at the age of 96.
Continue reading “Remembering Frederick Buechner, 1926-2022”