STORY OF MY LIFE

Goals:

1) to help young people identify their talent for spiritual and church leadership, and

2) to invite those with strong spiritual leadership potential to use their talent in making a difference.

Method:

use the Story of My Life vocational guide, developed by The Gallup Organization, with high school juniors and/or seniors in Catholic high school and parish youth ministry settings.

In a Catholic high school setting the typical Story of My Life Program would include:

(1) One class period for presentation on vocation issues and what the Story of My Life is about and the actual writing of the Story by the students. The average writing time is about fifteen minutes.

(2) An individual follow up interview and feedback session with each student that indicates strong talent for spiritual leadership. Student must agree to this meeting. The interview is done with a trained vocation minister, at the school, during a student’s study hall or free period. About 15 - 20 % of students in a Catholic high school will indicate this level of leadership talent. These follow up session are between 20 to 30 minutes in duration.

Responsibilities:

Vocation Office: The bulk of the responsibility for the program lies with the Diocesan Vocation Office. The office is responsible for all preparation of materials, the presentation on vocation issues, facilitating the day of writing stories, coordinating follow-up and work with school guidance department in setting up times for individual interviews.

Religion Department / Teachers: The religion teacher sets the date for the class presentation and story writing. The teacher should also introduce the vocation personnel conducting the day.

Guidance Office or Religion Teacher: The guidance office or religion teacher works with the Vocation Office in scheduling appropriate times and locations for the individual interview and feedback sessions.

An optional event: LEADERSHIP LUNCH

A possible follow up event in addition to the individual interviews is a Leadership Lunch. Those showing strong potential for spiritual and church leadership would be invited to meet together for a special lunch at school followed by a round table discussion of leadership with adults engaged in spiritual leadership (i.e. priests, religious, professional lay ministers, social action ministers, etc...) The purpose of the event would be to expose the students to people who are putting their spiritual leadership talent to use to make a difference. The time needed for such a lunch would be between 75 to 90 minutes during a school day.

How does the Story of My Life work?

(It is probably easier to understand the process by having one of the booklets available to see what students are asked to do.) We simply ask the students to write a story of their lives, but in an easy way. They indicate the degree to which a number of statements would be included in their books if they were to write the story of their lives.

Using a computer scoring program, the students’ responses are matched with how people with strong spiritual leadership talent responded in the books they wrote about themselves.

The results look at the levels of five dimensions of the student’s life: Adience, Can, Will, How, and Relate. Without going into great detail here, the kinds of things the report indicates are the presence of empathy, courage, mission, hope, focus, enabling ability, relator, community, God presence, and a few others.

The follow-up session begins with a brief interview with the student, in which the interviewer gets some information about the person that will help interpret the results of the Story. When the interviewer actually gives the student the results of their Story, they are explained in the context of their life experience.

The process is one of affirmation of the student’s talent. No discussion is given to areas where talent was not indicated. The philosophy is that talent should be developed and nurtured early on. When people operate from and develop their talent, they will become excellent in those areas and more productive in life, and will ultimately find greater fulfillment.

For more information please contact Father Burke Masters, Diocese of Joliet Vocation Director, St. Charles Pastoral Center, 402 S. Independence Blvd., Romeoville, IL 60446; 815/834-4004.

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