RELIGIOUS EDUCATION IDEAS
Vocation Awareness

  • Pray for vocations in the classroom on a daily basis. Contact the Vocations Office for a prayer poster and prayer cards
  • Provide opportunities for young people to work with priests, sisters or brothers. (FYI: There is a new community of religious brothers in south Phoenix.)
  • Invite small groups to share prayer and a meal with priests or sisters in the rectory or convent.
  • Have Students prepare a "Class Mass" with the intention and focus on vocation/ call.
  • Bring to the attention of the students graduates (alumni) who are priests, brothers, sisters.
  • Make available religious vocation materials in the resource center, library , or guidance office.
  • Explore through Scripture different ways that God calls people and the various responses to that call. (List provided in this section).
  • Promote understanding of religious vocations through reading and projects about founders of religious congregations. Regularly show videos/films on saints and their lives.
  • Help Students to know and recognize the people who have already responded to a religious vocational call in your parish or school.
  • Develop class projects that encourage student interaction with priests, deacons, and religious.
  • Build VOCATION AWARENESS education into the curriculum as a regular facet.
  • Pray for Vocation to the priesthood in the classroom

 

  • Invite religious faculty and parish priests to share their "vocation story" with students. Host a "Question/ Answer" panel discussion with priests or religious (you monitor questions)
  • Encourage students to pray so that they might discover and use the gifts that God has given them.
  • Guide students in the development of the habit of personal prayer for discernment of their vocations. The Vocations Office has a number of prayer resources available.
  • Sponsor a contest with vocation awareness themes (creative writing, posters, photography, art, etc.).
  • Celebrate VOCATION AWARENESS WEEK in January; use audio-visual materials with vocational themes.
  • Acquaint students with various types of Church ministries.
  • Incorporate vocation themes into regular classroom prayer.
  • Have each student or classroom pray for one seminarian or novice by name. Encourage the student(s) to write to the seminarian or novice.
  • Make available to students information about vocation events sponsored by the Vocation Office for Diocesan Priesthood or Religious Communities.
  • Arrange for regular visits to the classroom by priests and/ or sisters. INVITE them regularly! Arrange for the Vocation Director to visit your classroom for a presentation.
  • Arrange for an "In-Service" presentation on Vocations for the faculty and staff.