When I saw that this week was about passion-based learning, I thought it would be more about finding what students are passionate about and teaching from that. I was thinking the same thing one of the articles mentioned: that’s a lot of students, and you’re not likely to be able to find something that they are all passionate about. I hadn’t given much thought to the idea of just being passionate as a learner and as a teacher, but it makes sense. When I think about who my favorite teachers were, they all have one thing in common – they were enthusiastic about what they were teaching. As far as I knew, everything they taught was their favorite.
The article 9 Tenets of Passion Based Learning used an interesting sentence. They said, “passion is the narrative of mattering.” I felt this was an interesting way of describing passion, and a way that made it sound as important as it is. The same article also used the word “relevant” a lot. It’s important to make the learning relevant to students to keep their interest. If it’s not relevant to their life and easily applicable, they’re not going to be interested, regardless of how passionate you as a teacher try to be. Another common word was “contagious.” When the teacher is passionate, it rubs off onto the students and they also become passionate. I think if you just keep those two words in mind when teaching with passion-based learning, you’ll have a pretty good foundation to work with.
The article also mentioned that social media should be allowed in schools, rather than blocked and banned. If social media were allowed in schools, educators could teach students how to be a digital citizen and use it properly.
My favorite article on passion-based learning was 25 Ways to Institute Passion-Based Learning in the Classroom. At the very beginning of the page, there is a quote by W.B. Yeats. It says, “Education is not the filling of a bucket, but the lighting of a fire.” I had never heard this before, but really like it. When filling a bucket, it can only get so full before it overflows. When you light a fire, it has the potential to just keep burning, as long as you provide it fuel.
The entire site is filled with good techniques to use to engage students and help them become passionate learners. Definitely a site I want to save for later!
Brianna Harvey 
Nice post Brianna! I think making learning relevant is a really big part of incorporating passion based learning. As a teacher, I think it would be beneficial to get students to think of learning as a bigger picture. Relating learning to their future can help students be motivated to learn.
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I think making learning relevant makes all the difference!
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Nice post. I liked that you included that part about what we are learning needs to be relevant. Last week I subed in a math class for a teacher that had been my teacher. They had a big long worksheet to do which some complex graphing- the ones that look like a w. Well I took that class and did not remember a thing from it. It was hard to tell the students to do something that to me has no value in their lives. We even looked up when you could use and a few jobs came up. Some of the students said well it is supposed to help us be critical thinkers. Well yea but ew it was not a great way to produce critical thinking. From a students perspective if thats the way to become a critical thinker- well I’m good. I’ll just be a normal thinker. No one wanted to learn the material. The students who did it, completed it for a grade or out of boredom. Hopefully we can become better at making our material relevant to the students lives now and into the future.
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Obviously students have to learn that, but how could you make it relevant? Math is tricky when it gets into the upper levels! I subbed for math at the junior high once. Haven’t been back to sub there since! lol it wasn’t terrible but intimidating.
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