Week 1: Maintaining Passion for Teaching #etlead

How do we maintain our passion for teaching in the face of so much change?

“Passion is one of the most powerful engines of success. When you do a thing, do it with all your might. Put your whole soul into it. Stamp it with your own personality. Be active, be energetic and faithful, and you will accomplish your object. Nothing great was ever achieved without passion.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson

            I became an educator not because it was a dream of mine since a child, but because I had an innate desire to make a difference in the world…even if it meant one person at a time. I wanted to be someone who empowered individuals to realize their potentials, make goals and achieve them.  

            Personally I have always loved learning new things.  In fact, if I could afford it, I would stay in school forever.  As a result my passion for learning combined with the desire to make a differences in peoples lives lead me to education.  Throughout my college career I became more and more convinced that teaching was something I was born to do.  It has allowed me the opportunity to help guide young minds to become empowered, creative, literate, contributing members of society. If I can even make a positive difference in one child’s life, I believe all the hours spent lesson planning, going to meetings, counseling students and stressing about the little things, will have all been worth it. It is through them, that we can change the world. 

            With all that being said, although I do know that Passion is the key to a successful learning environment, I will admit that I have fallen into the trap of monotony on occasion.  To be honest, I find it difficult to be “on” all the time, especially when I find the content, as well as the curriculum chosen by my school district to be unhelpful and quite boring.  As a result my passion begins to dissipate. In turn it not only begins to affect my enthusiasm for that content area, but also takes a toll on all other subjects. The article titled “Maintaining Passion for Teaching” stated it perfectly, “Without passionate teachers, classroom atmospheres tend to be boring, disruptive, and disrespectful, doing further damage to a teacher’s mental outlook.” After all, if the teacher hates to teach it, ultimately the students will hate to learn it as well.  (Walls, Mohr, Bulger, 2002).  

So what can we do to regain this lost passion?  In the book “Teaching Like a Pirate” Burgess explains that on the “days in which we as educators feel bored by certain subjects or contents are the days that we must consciously make the decision to focus on [our] professional passion” (Burgess, 2012). Meaning that if we cannot find the enthusiasm or passion within our particular content, we should derive passion by thinking about why we became educators in the first place.  We need to fuel the fire in which started us on the journey to becoming teachers. If we are able to incorporate this excitement within our teaching, our students will learn.  After all “Passion is hot. It is a force that sells movies and margarine and everything in between. It is a force the can move mountains, inspire art and make the weak strong. We need to bring passion back into learning, in teaching and all around. Passion motivates. It makes a way out of no way. It allows students to overcome hardships to achieve a goal that is meaningful to them.” (Ramirez, 2013). 

            Another key to maintaining passion within your teaching is to realize that you DO have a life outside of teaching.  You DO have passions that might not involve teaching.  Take a step back from it all and take time for yourself.  It is in the inclusion of your personal passions that exist “outside of school [that] energizers and fortifies us inside of school” (Wink, Wink, 2004). 

With all the odds stacked against us at times it’s important to remember that “Passion is not just a personality trait that some people have and others lack, but rather something discoverable, teachable, and reproducible, even when the regularities of school life gang up against it” (Wink, Wink, 2004).  

Resources

           

Burgess, D. (2012). Teach like a pirate. San Deigo, CA: Dave Burgess Consulting, Inc.

Maintaining Passion for Teaching. In Masters in Education. Retrieved September 6, 2013, from http://www.masters-education.com/maintaining-passion-for-teaching/.

Ramirez, A. (April 2, 2013). Passion-Based Learning. In edutopia. Retrieved September 6, 2013, from http://www.edutopia.org/blog/passion-based-learning-ainissa-ramirez.

Walls, R., Mohr, D., Bulger, S. (November 2, 2002).  Stack the Deck in Favor of Your Students by Using the Four Aces of Effective Teaching . In The Journal of Effective Teaching. Retrieved September 6, 2013, from http://uncw.edu/cte/et/articles/bulger/.

Wink, J. & Wink D. (2004, pp.169-180) Teaching Passionately: What's Love Got to Do with It? Boston, MA: Allyn & Bacon.