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 “The hosts of NetVUE’s podcast Callings recently sat down for a conversation with Kristin Kobes Du Mez, professor of history and gender studies at Calvin University.
The hosts of NetVUE’s podcast Callings recently sat down for a conversation with Kristin Kobes Du Mez, professor of history and gender studies at Calvin University in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Since the publication of her New York Times bestselling book, Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation (2020), she has been in the middle of intense public debates about faith, nationalism, and gender in American Evangelicalism. In this episode, Kristin shares some of the story behind that story, reflecting on the role that historical research plays in public life.
Continue reading “Kristin Kobes Du Mez on Holding Things Loosely”In an era of recognizing the importance of geography and heritage, such as through indigenous land acknowledgments, we can learn a great deal about ourselves, each other, our world, and our vocations through our senses of place. This post considers what geographical history might teach us about vocation, particularly the systematic and individual influences at play.
As the fall semester gets underway, many students are returning to familiar spaces on their campuses, while new students are navigating unfamiliar terrain. This time of year also illuminates the divisions between “town and gown,” even though many leaders in both communities value bridge-building. As recently highlighted by the pandemic, the physical, economic, and relational health of our communities near and far are closely intertwined. In an era of recognizing the importance of geography and heritage, such as through indigenous land acknowledgments, we can learn a great deal about ourselves, each other, our world, and our vocations through our senses of place. Grounded in my dissertation research on the Appalachian region, this post considers what geographical history might teach us about vocation, particularly the systematic and individual influences at play.
Continue reading “Contemplating the Contours of Calling through Geographical History”Understanding this dimension of vocation offers an invitation to become the author of your own story. To do that, students must first discover they have a story to tell. Authoring one’s own story creates agency.
Part 5 of a series describing an electronic “vPortfolio” (vocation portfolio) developed at Augsburg University and centered on five metaphors for vocation: place, path, perspective, people, and story.
A fifth metaphor of vocation is story, which underscores the sense that everyone has a story to tell. There is a narrative arc to each life, and that story has a beginning, middle, and end. This dimension of vocation invites students to author their own stories and, in the telling, claim agency. “In the beginning, I/we….” or “Once upon a time, I/we….”
Continue reading “Vocation Virtually: Telling Your Story”Many people today are invoking history—sometimes erroneously, sometimes prophetically—in arguments about our future. Historic elections, historic unrest, calls to honor this history or rewrite that one. Perhaps more than ever fostering our students’ understanding of themselves as a part of history is crucial to our efforts to prepare them to pursue a fulfilled life.
Many people today are invoking history—sometimes erroneously, sometimes prophetically—in arguments about our future. Historic elections, historic unrest, calls to honor this history or rewrite that one. We are reminded daily that we are literally making history every day. Perhaps more than ever fostering our students’ understanding of themselves as a part of history is crucial to our efforts to prepare them to pursue a fulfilled life.
When I ask my students to write a religious autobiography, contextualizing their personal story in US religious history, they struggle to recognize a context beyond their immediate family because they have not been taught to think of themselves as embedded in history. If students do not learn to understand themselves as not only a product of history, but potential makers of history, we have neither prepared them to fully understand who they are nor to authentically understand or make for themselves a place in this world.
Continue reading “To “Know Thyself” You Must “Know Thine History””