I sometimes wonder where it all got lost. Or did it? It’s still there. Passion. Excitement for learning. Kids’ curiosity. Wonder. Dreaming. A child’s natural need to explore. It’s still there. Sometimes it just feels… buried. Schools became about numbers. About reports. About data. Points. Grades. Percents. Levels. More data. Stuff. Is a percentage of “facts they know” going to matter in 30 years? Or is that passionate teacher they had who inspired their love of science going to make the difference? Or what about the teacher that encouraged their understanding of history? It’s what counts today and tomorrow and well into our future. You just can’t put a point value on passion. Even worse? When we put all the value on points. Let’s start a national movement to get passion for learning back into our schools. Into our classrooms. Into our kids. How about today?
January 24, 2013 at 10:38 pm
Nail on the head! The science of teaching, too often, overshadows the art of teaching.
January 25, 2013 at 9:08 pm
Dear Krissy,
Your post about passion made me think about my past teachers and their effect on me. I had a teacher my freshman year of high school who lacked all forms of passion. It was a Leadership class and all we did was read “inspiration books” and take a quiz on them. If we had a question, she would get aggravate with us. She believed the course was useless. You cannot learn everything from a book and test.
In contrast, I had an English/literature teacher who was passion incarnate. She lived for English. She taught for over 35 years. She never lost her passion for English and always strove for instilling the same passion in her students.
I am currently earning a degree for Secondary Education partly because of my math professor. He was passionate about teaching the language of math. He strove for each of his students to understand math and see its values in life. Math is not just about learning to add, subtract, and multiply. Math is about learning to think critically and look for all possible options. His class has prepared me for every class I have taken since.
I don’t want to be a teacher who just teaches how to take a math test. I want to bring passion back into the classroom. I want my students to come out of a class wanting to ask why, wanting to find all possible options. There is a huge difference between learning for a test and learning because you want to.
I am a student and not yet a teacher, so I have a lot to learn. Is there any advice you could give me about bring passion back into the classroom? How have you begun to incorporate it into your classroom?
Sincerely,
J. Kameron Strickland
http://stricklandkameronedm310.blogspot.com/