Entering a classroom can be daunting for both new professors and students. Many students may feel isolated, lacking connections with peers. Fostering friendships through group projects and ungraded exercises can enhance belonging and satisfaction. Creating an inclusive environment benefits students academically, emotionally, and vocationally, enhancing their overall college experience.
Walking into a classroom on the first day of a semester can be intimidating, especially for new professors. A room full of strangers looks at you, expecting so much, including a masterful demonstration of your disciplinary expertise. If I as a faculty member can can admit that this experience has been daunting, especially in the early years of my teaching career, imagine what a room full of strangers feels like for some students.
For years, I assumed (wrongly) that the students in my classes knew each other. Certainly, I thought, they had certainly spent time together at orientation, sporting events, and the student union. That perspective ended quickly one afternoon when a student shared something that surprised me.
In “Follow Your Bliss and Other Lies About Calling,” Bonnie J. Miller-McLemore discusses the complexity of vocations, highlighting their potential for both meaning and pain. A recent webinar featuring faculty from NetVUE institutions explored themes of the book, emphasizing engagement in undergraduates’ understanding of callings amid modern challenges.
In Follow Your Bliss and Other Lies About Calling, Bonnie J. Miller-McLemore explores the “double-edged” quality of our callings, grappling honestly with how we live out our vocations in all their complexities. As affirming and generative as they can be, “deeply meaningful callings,” she writes, “are also often painful!” On November 13, four faculty members from NetVUE institutions explored this issue (and many more) as they discussed Miller-McLemore’s recent contribution to vocation studies, which also serves as NetVUE’s Big Read this year. In their discussion, they reflected on ways to engage this book with undergraduate students in the classroom and how its major themes can help them understand and contextualize the challenges that come with callings to work and live in a fast-paced, modern society.
Webinar presenters included (left to right) Brian Bowman, Deirdre Egan-Ryan, Jason Mahn, and Brad Pardue.
The first episode of season five of NetVUE’s podcast Callings features an interview with John Inazu, a distinguished professor of law and religion. Inazu discusses his book, Learning to Disagree, emphasizing empathy in disagreements. He reflects on his experiences as a lawyer and teacher, advocating for understanding and honoring differences in diverse environments.
John Inazu
NetVUE’s podcast Callings has released its first episode of season five, which features hosts John Barton and Erin VanLaningham’s interview with John Inazu, the Sally D. Danforth Distinguished Professor of Law and Religion at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri. Prior to teaching law, Inazu clerked for Judge Roger L. Wollman of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit and served as an associate general counsel with the Department of the Air Force at the Pentagon.
In this episode, he reflects on his vocation as a lawyer and teacher, and shares insights and examples from the classroom to the courtroom. He highlights the importance of honoring the humanity of others and explores how we can all improve in our abilities to navigate diversities and disagree well. As we do so, he encourages us to hold things loosely and honor our particularities. In his view, engaging difference might be as central to vocation as finding common beliefs with which to identify.
Click hereto listen to the episode featuring John Inazu titled “Learning to Disagree.”
Living out any calling in the midst of community requires a sense of humor. Laughter, after all, is about relationship: the corniest joke will succeed, and the cleverest fail, depending on how well the teller reads their audience. Laughter can invite people into shared community, and it can shut people out.
For teachers, then, laughter can be a gift, but it’s never without risk. So it’s good for us to think about how humor might shape our approach to our teaching, our students, and the way we see vocation. After all, Jason D. Stevens is right when he writes, “College, career, and calling are too often matters of pressure and panic. Laughter is something the world, and our students, could use more of. And so, perhaps, could vocational studies.”
“In my beginning is my end,” says T.S. Eliot in East Coker, the second poem of the Four Quartets. This is as true of semesters as it is of life. How we do the first day of class speaks volumes about our understanding of our vocation. It sets the tone for the whole semester.
It’s not surprising then that first day advice abounds for new teachers. I’ve received all kinds of it, some of it contradictory: Come in a minute late to make a dramatic entrance. Be there early to avoid any technology blunders or other signs of incompetence. Be at the door to personally greet each student as the walk in.
But there is one bit of advice about the first day of class that I received as a graduate student that I have never swerved from. Above all else, do not drone through the syllabus on the first day. Come up with a good opener, something that sets the tone or vibe of the class, that signals to students your take on the subject and how you’ll teach it. This is the best advice I’ve ever received. It’s also the hardest to follow, and it is deeply vocational.
