Crystal Norwood

Leah Pasquesi

Let Your Life Speak:

The Call to Purpose, Calling and

Exploration

Intended Audience

Student Affairs professionals that:

● Interact with students

● Supervise students

● Advise students

Students who:

● First years

● Struggle with transitioning

● Want to find their passions

Why a Seminar? To provide the space for students to answer Big Questions, such as:

• How can i make a difference in the world?

• Is there really more to life than what I now know?

• Where do I feel belonging and community?

• Who am I?

• Whose am I?

• Who am I called to be?

• What do I really value?

• How can I make the world a better place?

• What do I deeply love?

• Do I need religion or spirituality to live a meaningful life?

Our Motivations

• We believe in the power of allowing students to follow their

calling

• Students are often pressure to decide what they want to do

with “the rest of their lives” beginning at an early age

• Conversations are often focused on selecting the “right”

major or choosing a career path without reflecting on one’s

passions and values

• The questions we fall back on in reflecting on this are:

• If you could do anything that you knew you couldn’t fail, what

would it be?

• What wakes you up in the morning?

Seminar Outline Week 1- Journey of Transformation

• Life Map • Alumni Panel • Vulnerability TedTalk

Week 2- Finding Value in All Things (Incorporating your Loyola Experience)

• One minute Reflections • Spiritual Buddy • This I believe Essay

Week 3- Soul Care through Life Changes

• Student Affairs Panel

• StoryCorp • Eulogy

Week 4- Finding Your Calling- Looking Deep Within

• Discovering Your Red Rubber Ball Activity • Wrapping up (What does this all mean?) • Affirmations • Letter to future Self

A year after this seminar is

over, we hope students

will….

Learning Goals Foundational Knowledge

1. Students will be able to understand discernment as a tool to make an appropriate

decision about career choice and will understand that discernment is a life-long

process.

2. Students will remember that there is a universal human hunger for connectedness,

purpose, and meaning.

3. Students will understand the big questions and the reason for asking and delving deep

into them.

Application Goals

1. Students will use storytelling and reflective dialogue to explore, make sense of, and

hear their own and others’ diverse narratives.

2. Students will imagine themselves as a whole person committed to their own and

others holistic development.

3. Students will use faith development theories and vocational discernment tools to

make sense of their own vocational story reflecting on their why, their values, and

their passion areas.

Learning Goals

Integration

1. Students will connect with what they are learning about Fowler’s faith development

theory and vocational discernment to their own life and work in the future.

2. Students will integrate their values system and discernment efforts into everyday

practice.

3. Students will connect together meaningful ideas and practices.

Human Dimensions 1. Students will come to see themselves in any career that authentically combines soul

with role.

2. Students will become aware of their own vocational story, what their calling is, and

the gifts and values that accompany it.

3. Students will interact sensitively, compassionately, and confidentially with

participants in the seminar by listening with love and care.

Learning Goals Caring Goals

1. Students will be ready to engage with others holistically and authentically.

2. Students will value critical thinking and self-reflection as vital to one’s development

and exploration.

3. Students will be genuinely interested in other participants’ stories because these

stories shaped and will continue to shape their lives.

4. Students will be excited to connect their own values with the potentially rich

contributions they can make to society.

Learning how to Learn 1. Students will be able to identify important resources for their own continued

learning.

2. Students will be able to construct knowledge about what means to be their whole

self.

3. Students will live their lives in ways that promote ongoing learning and development.

Assessment

Activities

Assessment Activities

Eulogy Activity o Objective:

Individuals will reflect upon their long term goals and consider

the legacy they would like to leave on this earth

Life Map o Objective:

Individuals will consider how their past and present experiences,

places, events, people, values and environments shape who

they were, are and who they want to be

Assessment Activity #1: Eulogy Activity

Description o This activity assumes that participants will live full, happy and successful lives. In

framing the activity with this mindset, participants will be prompted to reflect upon

how they would like to be remembered once that moment in time comes when they

are no longer “with us.”

o This is a written assignment that encourages students to consider what they would

like their legacy to be.

o Participants will be invited to approach this assignment from two perspectives:

Writing a eulogy with the focus of it being the life you’ve lived up to this

moment in time. What have you done? How will you be remembered?

You can write your eulogy with the focus of it being the nice long life that you

plan on living. You can write from any hypothetical situation. Maybe you lived

to be 90. What did you do in your 90 years that have positively affected those

around you? This scenario can include a little more fiction, but it should still be

realistic and reflective of how you actually would like to be remembered.

Rationale for Assessment

Activity 1: Eulogy

Learning Goals Met:

Application Goals

o Use storytelling and reflective dialogue to explore, make sense of, and

hear your own and other diver narratives

o Use faith development theories and vocational discernment tools to make

sense of your own vocational story

Integration

o Students will integrate their values system and discernment efforts into

everyday practice

Human Dimension

o Students will become aware of their own vocational story, what their

calling is, and the gifts and values that accompany it

o Students will become a person who can live free, undivided and whole

Rationale for Assessment

Activity 1: Eulogy

Learning Goals Met:

Caring Goals

o A year (or more) after this seminar is over, we want and hope that

students will be ready to engage with others holistically and authentically

o Students will value critical thinking and self-reflection as vital to one’s

development and exploration.

Learning How to Learn

o Students will be able to construct knowledge about what vocational

discernment means to be their whole self.

Assessment Activity #2: Life Map Activity

Description o This activity requires individuals to reflect upon their past, present, and future self,

in thinking about the ways in which events, places, people, values and environments

have shaped who they were, are, and who they are going to be.

o Using the supplies of a large piece of paper and markers, individuals will map out

their journey through life.

o In addition to the personal reflection this requires, participants will also be asked to

share openly their experiences with others. In an effort to support and encourage

all participants in deep reflection and open sharing, facilitators will model such

vulnerability by sharing their own life maps before participants get started.

Rationale for Assessment

Activity 2: Life Map

Learning Goals Met

Application Goals

o A year (or more) after this seminar is over, we want and hope that

students will use storytelling and reflective dialogue to explore, make

sense of, and hear their own and others’ diverse narratives.

Human Dimensions Goals

o Students will become aware of their own vocational story, what their

calling is, and the gifts and values that accompany it.

o Students will interact sensitively, compassionately, and confidentially

with participants in the seminar by listening with love and care.

Rationale for Assessment

Activity 2: Life Map

Learning Goals Met

Caring Goals

o A year (or more) after this seminar is over, we want and hope that

students will be ready to engage with others holistically and

authentically.

o Students will value critical thinking and self-reflection as vital to one’s

development and exploration.

o Students will be genuinely interested in other participants’ stories

because these stories shaped and will continue to shape their lives.

Assessment for Life Map: Rubric

Teaching & Learning

Activities

Teaching and Learning Activities

Vulnerability TedTalk and Reflective Dialogue

with Self and Others o Objective:

To encourage students to reflect upon the power of

vulnerability and authenticity and to consider how connection,

worthiness, and compassion can lead to whole-hearted living.

Additionally, our hope is that students will reflect upon what let

themselves be deeply seen,how to live with their whole hearts

even when there is no guarantee, to practice gratitude and joy

and believe the we are enough.

Teaching and Learning Activities

Discovering Your Big Red Rubber Ball o Objectives:

Participants will reflect upon the ways in which we can discover

our passions and embrace creativity.

In being provided the space to reflect on big questions

surrounding vocational discernment, we hope students will

understand the value of constant reflection in order to find their

heart’s content which will in turn lead to prosperity, peace and

happiness.

Teaching and Learning Activity #1 Vulnerability TedTalk and Reflective

Dialogue with Self and Others

Description o After watching Brene Brown’s TedTalk on “Vulnerability,” we provide participants

with the opportunity to journal about their reactions for about 10 minutes. We will

then split participants into small groups of 3-5 students with an opportunity to

engage in reflective dialogue with others. After participants have had at least 20

minutes to do this, we will invite everyone to come back together for a large group

discussion, hoping that some of the following powerful concepts and messagesare

discussed while also listening to how participants made their own meaning from the

video.

Teaching and Learning Activity #1 Vulnerability TedTalk and Reflective

Dialogue with Self and Others

Learning Goals Met: • Students will remember that there is a universal human hunger for

connectedness, purpose and meaning.

• Students will imagine themselves as a whole person committed to their own

and others holistic development.

• Students will interact sensitively, compassionately and confidently with other

participants in the seminar by listening with love and care

• Students will be ready to engaged with others holistically and authentically.

• Students will be able to construct knowledge about what it means to be their

whole self.

Teaching and Learning Activity #2 Discovering Your Big Red Rubber Ball

Description o In coming prepared to this seminar having read the “Rules of the Red Rubber Ball,”

we hope to provide in this session an opportunity for students to reflect on the

following big questions:

“If you Could do anything and knew you couldn’t fail, what would it be?”

“What wakes you up in the morning?

o At this time, we will provide students with an hour to reflect upon these questions

where every they feel most comfortable doing such introspection, whether it be it

staying in the room, going on a walk, visiting a coffee shop, etc.

o This activity will be one that we would facilitate at the end of the seminar so that

students will have had previous opportunities to reflect and therefore will hopefully

feel comfortable engaging in such deep thinking.

Teaching and Learning Activity #2 Discovering Your Big Red Rubber Ball

Learning Goals Met:

• Students will integrate their values system and discernment efforts into

everyday practice.

• Students will come to see themselves in any career that authentically

combines soul with role.

• Students will become aware of their own vocational story, what their calling

is, and the gifts and values that accompany it.

• Students will value critical thinking and self-reflection as vital to one’s

development and exploration.

• Students will be ready to actively self reflect upon their values, their “why,”

and their passion areas.

Integration of Design Teaching and Learning Activities

Ted Talk-Brene Brown Vulnerability

Kevin Carroll-Red Rubber Ball Reflection

Assessment Activities

Life Map

Eulogy

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B Brown. (2012, March). Listening to shame. Retrieved from http://www.ted.com/talks/brene_brown_listening_to_shame

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Brown, Brene. (2010). The gifts of imperfection: Let go of who you think you’re supposed to be and embrace who you are. Center City, Minnesota: Hazelden.

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