Tag: risk

Vocation as Process: Learning through Creative Failure

Creative writing pedagogy can enrich vocational teaching by emphasizing process over product, embracing failure, and prioritizing revision. This approach fosters courage, openness, and trust in students while encouraging them to take risks and learn from their mistakes. Ultimately, self-trust and experimentation lead to personal and professional growth.

A series of posts on what creative writing pedagogy has to offer vocational teaching in any discipline.

In On Being Stuck: Tapping Into the Creative Power of Writer’s Block, Laraine Herring writes, “We all have methods for getting in our own way. It’s human nature.” Her point is true for everyone—not just for creative writers. It’s especially true for students on their vocational journeys. As I mentioned in the first post in my series, the skills required for vocational discernment—courage, openness, and trust—are the same skills required for making art. And the same barriers to making good art—fear, self-doubt, and self-criticism—can also block or challenge students as they explore and discern their vocations. That’s why I think creative writing pedagogy offers helpful frameworks for all instructors when it comes to teaching vocation.

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In praise of mischief-makers

A surprising piece in Inside HigherEd this week praises the work of mischief-makers. The authors make a case to other deans and directors to consider hiring people who are willing to shake things up and take risks. During this time of crisis and tumultuous change, we may be tempted to stick with what seems safe and known. But in fact the opposite is what is most needed now, they argue.

Their understanding of constructive mischief-making relies upon a certain set of virtues. The whole essay is an exercise in thinking about these interrelated qualities — “having a bent for mischief isn’t sufficient on its own,” they warn. Higher education needs more people who possess the traits of “creative playfulness” and an “impulse to nudge against tradition”; who naturally embody “a mix of empathy and impatience”; and who have a sense of humour and “an ability to connect to others from the heart.”

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