• December 06 2013

Collecting moments of grace is a practice that can help us remember the spiritual dimensions of the work and the life.

• December 06 2013

Are you a comfort-handed or confrontation-handed religious educator? Or do you teach with both hands?

• December 06 2013

Some young people have a highly “vertical” spirituality in which they invest most of their spiritual attention to God “above.” For others, faith is all about treating other people kindly. And for some, faith helps them cope with the things going on inside them.

• December 06 2013

We all have favorite places, each with its own beauty. Our beautiful places are like balconies that help us look at the dancing and dramas of our lives from above it all.

• November 12 2013

As soon as he was finished with grad school, a young man got the job of his dreams. He implemented all of the ideas that had been piling up inside his mind while he completed two years of coursework. Sixteen months later, he quit.

• November 12 2013

Teaching For Discipleship doesn’t just focus on certain content; there are also pedagogical distinctions. Teaching For Discipleship employs rules of engagement, and many religion teachers visibly post the ones they want students to play by. Here are four that every religion teacher should insist their students follow.

• November 12 2013

A small, but solid, study conducted by Newsweek and BeliefNet back in 2005 asked 1,004 adults about their faith. Here are some of the results.

• November 12 2013

Education done with inspiration contributes to one’s formation. Education done with a blessed combination of intellectual quality, fierce conversation, soulful reflection, critical thinking, human touch, and a happy heart leaves its mark.

• October 09 2013

It is possible that superhuman expectations will now become a normal dimension of the vocational calling to teach, to lead, to serve.

• October 09 2013

It is not the topic being discussed in class that determines whether or not our conversations are moral. It is the amount of respect shown in the conversation.

• October 09 2013

More than 2,000 young Catholics attending the National Catholic Youth Conference (NCYC) responded to the question, “What has been a really strong influence on your Catholic faith?”

• October 09 2013

The bread and butter—or bacon and eggs—of our callings center around how well we attend to the basic and less exciting tasks of our profession.

• September 03 2013

Sometimes the Spirit brings you a Passing Partner. That is, someone who will join you on a project for a moment, a minute, a month, or the time it takes to complete a monument.

• September 03 2013

Teaching For Discipleship occasionally, and carefully, creates moments of what we used to call “cognitive dissonance,” which is simply a fancy term for “messing with our heads.”

• September 03 2013

In his book, "What Do Our Children Know About Their Faith?", respected researcher Dr. John J. Convey of Catholic University compiled data gleaned from the Catholic adolescents who took the ACRE in 2004-2005.

• September 03 2013

In this touching account, a prayer calls us back to embrace our imperfections.

• May 07 2013

In his book, Leadership Without Easy Answers, Ronald Heifetz proposes that the practice of Getting to the Balcony is a way of rising above the "dance floor" of our work.

• May 07 2013

Last fall, a group of college freshmen and their parents gathered at a Catholic college for a day of orientation. Every speaker during Orientation Day finished with this identical statement: “By the way, you’re not here to get an education. You are here to learn how to help the world."

• May 07 2013

At St. Charles High School in LaPlace, Louisiana, we have been working on infusing Catholic education across the curriculum for nine years.

• May 07 2013

Our passions and our callings bring us both blessings and burdens.

• April 03 2013

Parker Palmer, author of The Courage To Teach and other books on the vocational lives of educators, suggests that the vocation to teach has seasons.

• April 03 2013

Teaching For Discipleship takes seriously the art and the potential that comes with the call "to translate" well and to do it "without betrayal."

• April 03 2013

After documenting the spiritual trajectory of Catholic adolescents over a 5-year span, researchers Christian Smith and Patricia Snell have identified some significant changes in the spirituality of Catholic youth after high school.

• April 03 2013

Whenever I fly into a city for work, I try to ride the city bus from the airport to the hotel. Public transportation keeps you in touch with the working class, the locals, and whoever else is trying to get to work, the grocery store, or the clinic.