Category: Series

Building a Vocational Praxis of Teamwork

This post explores how community-engaged learning (CEL) fosters vocational exploration through teamwork. It highlights the transformative potential of collaborative experiences, enabling students to enhance communication skills and discover their personal and communal responsibilities. Real-life examples illustrate how teamwork can significantly impact personal growth and understanding of vocation as a shared journey.

A series on the role that community-engaged learning can play in vocational exploration and discernment.

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As previous posts in this series have illustrated, community-engaged learning (CEL) is a powerful pedagogy for facilitating vocational exploration. This post builds on those insights to show how opportunities for teamwork in CEL projects can further deepen vocational work. Most faculty members recognize that teamwork enables students to construct knowledge together, simulating the kind of collaboration, problem-solving, and communication that is ubiquitous in professional environments. Indeed, teamwork promotes the vital skills that the National Association of Colleges and Employers heralds, which include the following:

  • Careful listening,
  • Understanding and asking appropriate questions,
  • Managing conflict and making compromises,
  • Interacting with and respecting diverse viewpoints and personalities
  • Meeting ambiguity with resilience and agility,
  • Meeting one’s responsibilities, and
  • Developing strong, positive working relationships.

But teamwork also empowers students to discover their gifts and talents, to consider their life purpose, and to examine how their life journeys are, as Erin VanLaningham writes, not “singular paths,” but rather roads intersecting with and affected by others. Teamwork shows how our lives are “called forth by others,” in Jason Mahn’s framing, because it enables us to build new relationships in purposeful communities. This post provides an example of an intentionally designed teamwork experience in a CEL seminar to show how this high-impact practice of collaboration can be marshaled for vocational discovery.

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Theatre for Vocational Discernment

Theatre plays a significant role in vocational exploration and community-building by encouraging students to take risks and engage deeply with their identities. Through acting classes and other theatre-related experiences, students discover their purpose and develop confidence, fostering essential skills for their future vocations and creating a supportive community environment.

A series on the role of theatre in vocation, with a focus on how it supports community-building, the uncommon good, and vocational exploration and discernment for all our students.

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Lights up on theatre acting classroom, full equally of theatre and non-theatre students. Students stand in a circle.

STUDENT

(To the theatre instructor)

Wait, what are you asking me to do? Make a weird sound?

THEATRE INSTRUCTOR

Yes! Anything you feel inside, just let it out.

STUDENT

Um, okay, sorry, I don’t know if I’m doing this right.

THEATRE INSTRUCTOR

Try not to worry if it’s right, anything that comes out is fine. The goal is to take the risk to be silly and discover it’s okay.

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STUDENT

(Looks around nervously and blurts out)

BAAAHHHH!!!

(Class erupts in applause and laughter.)

OTHER STUDENTS

(overlapped adlibbing)

Yes, that was great! Loved it! So good! Knew you could do it! Fun!

Lights fade as STUDENT can’t help but smile out of pride.

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Re-discovering Life’s Purposes through Childhood Play

This post discusses the importance of understanding one’s vocational identity through the exploration of “being-roles,” which are modes of existence reflecting innate attributes. The author emphasizes the value of childhood experiences and play in revealing these roles, suggesting that vocational discernment is a continuous process of self-discovery and narrative evolution.

The first post in a series drawing on a therapist’s insights into play, wandering, and presence in relation to vocational exploration and discernment.

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As a therapist for almost two decades, I’ve listened many times to clients voice their vocational confusion as they ask, with a gnawing ache, “Who am I?” and “What is my life for?” and “Is this all there is?”

The ages of my clients have varied widely, but their quest for meaning and the identity distress they’ve experienced are similar. In his work on psychosocial development over the course of our lives, Erik Erickson recognized identity, relationships, and service as innate human crises to be resolved during different ages. He noted that, in adolescence, we struggle with identity vs. role confusion; in middle adulthood, generativity vs. stagnation; and in late adulthood, integrity vs. despair. Identity formation and meaning making are not single developmental tasks but recurring psychological negotiations across the lifespan.

As we negotiate these phases, psychologists Dan McAdams and Kate McLean theorize that people develop a “narrative,” an evolving life story, that helps them make sense of transitions, challenges, and their place in the world. As a result, questions of meaning may re-emerge during young adulthood, midlife, and retirement, when individuals are often revising the stories that they tell about themselves. These theories about our developmental stages and narrative identity suggest that vocational angst is not a failure of direction, but a recurring process of meaning reconstruction throughout one’s life.

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From Competition to Contribution: The Communal Context of Vocation

Wendell Berry critiques competition-driven economic systems, particularly in U.S. agriculture, arguing they diminish communal bonds and promote self-centered ambitions. Higher education perpetuates this by encouraging students to view success as individualistic. Instead, fostering a sense of contribution to the community can reshape students’ sense of vocation and enrich societal collaboration.

A series on vocation, the dignity of labor, and the misconceptions that prevent us from valuing all work.

In “Economy and Pleasure,” Wendell Berry writes, “No individual can lead a good or a satisfying life under the rule of competition … no community can succeed except by limiting somehow the competitiveness of its members.” This impulse to compete, Berry argues, drives our economic system, which divides people into two categories: winners and losers. His particular focus in this essay is on agriculture in the United States, where he sees such competition as the dominant mentality: farmers race to acquire the education and resources necessary to defeat other farmers in a game governed by “the rules of competitive economics.”

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Vocation and Pedagogy III: Practicing for Life’s Journey

The integration of vocational education in biochemistry fosters a deeper understanding of character and virtue. By encouraging students to explore questions about their future roles as scientists and healthcare professionals, the approach enhances engagement and comprehension. This shift, while raising awareness of knowledge gaps, promotes profound learning despite a temporary dip in confidence.

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A series exploring the connections between vocation and pedagogy.

Educating students for vocation means introducing them to a more substantive understanding of a good and flourishing life. It should lead to considerations of character and virtue—ways of being and acting that give meaning, purpose, and direction.  When I first thought about integrating vocation into my teaching, I picked my junior-level biochemistry course. I thought if I could make space for these considerations in this content-heavy upper-level major course, I could find space for vocation in any course. As I contemplated my approach to this work, I wanted to ensure that what I added supported the disciplinary content and fit appropriately within the arc of students’ vocational discernment.

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I Am Not What I Do: The Vocational Dignity of All Work

This post discusses the importance of recognizing the dignity of all labor and the misconceptions surrounding vocational identity within achievement culture. It critiques how society values certain jobs over others, emphasizing that personal identity should not be tied to accomplishments. A call is made to affirm the inherent worth of every individual and their work.

A series on vocation, the dignity of labor, and the misconceptions that prevent us from valuing all work.

I used to direct a justice education program at the University of Notre Dame, which was part of a large institute that offered a wide array of opportunities for students to bring their academic, professional, and personal passions into alignment and to serve the common good. Part of what made this program special was the large cohort of student leaders with whom we worked each year. Assigned to a small group of their peers, these student leaders led classroom discussions, experiential learning activities, and personal reflections that connected students to many different social issues. Our center attracted students who wanted to channel their concerns for vulnerable and marginalized populations and make a difference in the world.

During one of our weekly late-night training sessions, we were reflecting on the now famous line from Bryan Stevenson that “each of us is more than the worst thing we’ve done.” My students embraced Stevenson’s thinking and his argument that a person’s identity is not defined by any particular failure. As he shows, to conflate identity and the blemishes on someone’s record is dehumanizing. It is why, in justice education, we try to identify and dismantle ways that even our language is demeaning. It is why we resist labels like “felons,” “illegals,” or (from even longer ago) “superpredators.” Stevenson helps us see that we must stand against these labels because what a person does and who a person is are not the same. Doing so reflects our ultimate commitment to human dignity.

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The Uncommon Good of Theatre

The post discusses theatre’s vital role in fostering community, exploring vocation, and supporting marginalized groups, particularly queer students. It emphasizes how theatrical experiences can challenge stereotypes, enhance empathy, and allow individuals to engage with diverse identities. Ultimately, theatre promotes personal and communal growth by recognizing and embracing the “uncommon good.”

A series on the role of theatre in vocation, with a focus on how it supports community-building, the uncommon good, and vocational exploration and discernment for all our students.

STUDENT

Will you run lines with me for my acting scene?

ROOMMATE

Sure. What’s the part?

STUDENT

My character tells his best friend he’s in love with him.

(Roommate freezes, suddenly guarded.)

ROOMMATE

Wait—are you gay?

STUDENT

I don’t think so. I just want to get the scene right.

ROOMMATE

Never mind, I’m not running those lines.

(Lights fade.)

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This scene is, unfortunately, not fiction. It is rooted in real student encounters. I’ve heard these stories whispered in the wings, muttered backstage, or offered between rehearsals when a student feels safe enough to speak. Often students don’t name these moments as trauma—because they’ve been trained to believe it is normal to be shamed. But they are traumatic. They are moments in which students begin to doubt not just their talent, but their belonging. And that doubt, left unspoken, corrodes the heart of their calling.

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Vocation and Pedagogy II: Managing Cognitive Load

The author reflects on their early teaching experiences, highlighting microaggressions and their impact on both faculty and students. They emphasize the importance of fostering a sense of belonging for effective learning, linking it to cognitive load theory. By implementing strategies to reduce cognitive load, educators can enhance students’ engagement and vocational development.

A series exploring the connections between vocation and pedagogy.

I still remember the day that a promising student from my biochemistry class stopped by my office to tell me she didn’t think she wanted to be a science professor anymore. She had watched me navigate interactions with disrespectful students and noticed in other classes that some students treated their male professors differently. She worried that she would not be able to manage situations where students questioned her credibility because of her gender. In her own work, she sometimes struggled to focus on content and hesitated to speak up in the classroom, anxious that someone would challenge her as they sometimes did me and that she wouldn’t know what to do. The exclusion that she observed and experienced shaped what she imagined as possible for her future; it also affected her learning.

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While it might be tempting to dismiss this student as an anomaly, experiences like this are all too common for many students. Students bring many different stories into the classroom with them, and interactions they observe can confirm their beliefs or fears about themselves and their place in an educational setting. Belonging is an essential pre-condition for vocational discernment and for learning. Students need to feel safe and to experience belonging to be able to respond to our invitations to explore their vocations and imagine their futures. Research shows that a lack of belonging—which can include experiencing or witnessing microaggressions—reduces a student’s capacity to learn.

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Connecting Calling to the Dignity of Labor

The author reflects on students’ struggles with vocation and purpose, noting how traditional vocational frameworks can induce anxiety instead of inspiration. He highlights misconceptions regarding identity and achievements, emphasizing the need to evaluate vocational exploration in relation to the dignity of all labor. The series aims to confront these issues and promote a more conscientious vocational discernment for our students.

A series on vocation, the dignity of labor, and the misconceptions that prevent us from valuing all work.

“Am I doing what I’m supposed to be doing?” 

Recently, I met with a group of students who were articulating the kind of sincere desires we so often hear in vocational work. One of the great joys in this kind of work with my students—which I’m sure is true for many of us—is accompanying them as they wrestle with these big questions of meaning and purpose. 

At the same time, those questions often come at us like a double-edged sword, because students are not always asking them from a place of deep joy. Frederick Buechner’s classic formulation of vocation, where God calls a person to “the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet” is inspirational, but it can also induce anxiety. And the students with whom I recently met were asking questions from that place. Instead of being inspired, they were worried that they were somehow getting it wrong. To them, vocation feels hidden and so morally urgent that missing or misunderstanding a calling is tantamount to sin or vice. It seems to me that if the formation programs I lead create angst in my students, I might be doing something wrong. 

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Self-Positioning as Vocational Exploration in Community-Engaged Learning

This post discusses how community-engaged learning (CEL) transforms students’ vocational exploration by emphasizing self-positioning and relational practices. It highlights the importance of understanding one’s identity and context, which fosters authentic connections and transforms perceptions. Through reflective exercises and community interaction, students gain insights into their roles and aspirations, leading to meaningful career paths.

A series on the role that community-engaged learning can play in vocational exploration and discernment.

Our students come to us and into our educational spaces—our classrooms, laboratories, studios, and offices—with different experiences, identities, interests, and talents. Recognizing this dynamic is central to our ability to harness the power of community-engaged learning (CEL) for vocational exploration. CEL is a pedagogical strategy that pairs meaningful and mutually beneficial work in communities with reflection. In our first post, we asserted that CEL helps students explore vocational paths by exposing them to new voices; it enables them to explore their interests and talents within this context and offers them a pedagogy of hope. 

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In this post, we explore vocational practices that elevate student learning within CEL and prepare students to build positive relationships with community partners and fellow learners. We focus on moments in which vocational exploration can strengthen CEL by equipping students to understand their own identities, assumptions, and knowledge about a community. When we integrate opportunities for individual self-positioning, good neighbor practices, and contextual preparation into our CEL courses, students are better equipped to explore their callings in community with others.

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