Teach Your Passion

As I watched our guest presenter, Tim Bedley, at our last staff development day I was struck with a single thought; this guy is passionate about music. Furthermore, he found a way to incorporate his passion into his lessons to enhance engagement and increase learning. This was very cool.

I recently read an article referencing words from one of my favorite children science fiction authors, Bruce Coville. He said, “If someone were crazy enough to let me run a school and I had the privilege of interviewing teachers, my first question would be, "What's your passion?"” This struck me because passionate people move me. The energy, the excitement, and the love push all of us to become better people.

"What's your passion?" Imagine that in an interview. I’m not sure that my college training would have prepared me for that question. The honest truth is that the most inspiring people in the world are teachers. No matter what the topic, they move people to better themselves in some way – to me this is the root of teaching with passion. Unfortunately, I see some of the initiatives coming from our state and federal government being counterintuitive to this. Some of our current educational reformists have, in my opinion, forgotten that public school is a vehicle for personal betterment. Many of the new mandates (and some of the mandate relief proposals) are missing the boat on education and they are certainly not aligned with the SED’s own Essential Elements for the middle-level. If we’re not inspiring kids to search for their own passion, then why are we teaching?

These outside factors do negatively affect us, when all we want to do is teach/inspire. This exact dilemma was presented by Alfie Kohn who posed a very difficult question, “Will teachers treat students the way they, themselves, are being treated…or the way they wish they were being treated?” I encourage you to stay-the-course of the Essential Elements. This is the “secret” that SED and many of the reformists are missing – schools that implement the Seven Essential Elements have proven to be effective, affective, and have high student achievement levels. AAK is such an example of excellence.

Be proud of what you do and have a wonderful weekend.