What Is Up With Passion-Based Learning?

I think that my title of this blog is super fitting because I did not know what it meant to have passion based learning until I did some learning. As I was searching through the articles on our site the two that stood out to me were the Passion-Based Learning, Edutopia and the Nine Tenets of Passion-Based Learning. These two stood out to me because I knew they would give me the basics to this concept.

In the Passion-Based Learning article I learned so much. I first stated off about talking about passion in our learning and how we need to get it back. This is when it all clicked for me. I realized that children are not having fun learning because there is no passion there. They are learning what the books want them to learn rather than what they want to learn. Not only that but it explains what passion can do for our students. How if they have passion in something they are interested in then nothing can stand in their way. However, we have to find out what the students are passionate about, and there are two ways to do this. First, find out what they are innately passionate about. Then, as I teach I must have excitement about the topic that I teaching, it will soon rub off on the students.

Photo CC By: Astama flicka

After reading the first article I was super excitement about this theory, then I read the second one called Nine Tenets of Passion-Based Learning. After reading this I realized there is a lot more that goes into this to make it work well. I learned about the nine factors that must go into making this work. The first one is reach out to the disenfranchised.  This means to reach out all students especially the ones that are struggling. The second one is show relevance to life outside of school. This means that we as teachers must understand that schoolwork is important but students are still dealing with real life outside of school. At times this could even draw them away from their work. Next, indoctrinate passion into the system.  We have to not control our classroom but instill passion into the education.Fourth, try using the school wide enrichment model.  This means to find what the student loves to do really get to know them. We have to know what their strengths and weaknesses are. Fifth, digital media is key. We are changing every day in our world and it is shifting more to technology. We have to allow students to use media so they can get in touch with things they love easier. Sixth, tap into the wisdom of your peers. This is important to making our classrooms more full of passion because we have to share the things we are doing in our room with our fellow teaching peers. We can do this by social media so that schools all over can see what we are doing. Seventh, become a digital citizen,  we must show the proper ways to use media and the safe way to use it. It is our jobs as teachers to do so, that way our students are safe as they are researching, in and out of school. Eighth, passion is infectious. This is another step that I felt was very important. We have to model passion if it is going work. Students will see when we are passionate about something and when we are not. Finally, connect with parents. This is one of the post important steps of all. We have to get our parents involved in their students’ school work. They must see what is going on and once our parents care more our students will care more.

Now, these are not the full explainations of the nine tenets but they give the readers an idea of what needs to be done in our classroom. I don’t know about you but I want their to be passion in my classroom. I want my students to love learning. If you want more information about the two articles I learned about just click on the hyper links I have added in the first paragraph! Passion is key to students loving learning!