Tag: Critical Thinking

While I teach my students primarily online, I have some designated time with them in a seventy-five minute afternoon session, held once a week. While these sessions are designed to offer a space for continued study and socially distanced peer interaction, I also use this time as a means for getting to know my students on a level beyond academics. My afternoon sessions have become more of a reflection of self and purpose, both academically and personally.

In keeping with this theme, I am a fan of Oprah’s Super Soul Sundays because I can always find a short video clip of an interview seasoned with meaning and most fitting for personal reflection. This past week, my students and I watched Oprah’s interview with Steven Pressfield entitled “First Look: 4 Questions to Help you Find Your Calling.” Following our viewing session, some students were perplexed about the idea of a calling, while others were most confident about identifying the calling they finally had an opportunity to identify and share.

I asked students to select a question or two from below and share their response(s) on the classroom blackboard.

1. What is a calling?
2. Where does one’s calling exist?
3. Is a calling spiritual?
4. What is your calling?
5. What wonderings do you have after watching the short clip?

Following our blackboard reflection session, we spent about twenty-five to thirty minutes sharing perspectives and questions. I was pleased to discover the following:

• While the majority of students believed they were too young to know their “calling,” both my boarding and day student group included at least two to three students who identified their calling.
• About half of my students believed that a calling is not spiritual. Rather, these students believed a calling is the result of lived experiences.
• While the majority agreed that a calling should bring joy to one’s life, students couldn’t define the true definition of joy, so they settled for aligning one’s calling with a feeling of sustained happiness.
• One student asked if playing video games is his calling because he is happy and looses track of time when he plays.
• Every student coalesced with the idea that finding one’s calling must be prioritized as the ultimate goal in life.

What is your calling? How and when did you discover this calling? What are your overall thoughts about the idea of “a calling”? Also, if additional understanding is required, another great example by author Wes Moore can be found here. I’m always looking forward to your your responses…