Here is the post I gave them....
Learning is about passion.
Flickr attribution http://www.flickr.com/photos/tyla/3196687667/ by Tyla'75You need to have this passion to succeed in life. In recent weeks I have seen many of you get spring fever and lose your will to learn. Many of you are going goldfish,
not asking questions and just wanting answers. This passiveness needs to disappear and you need to rekindle your passion to learn.We only have a few weeks left in school. Take everyday as an opportunity to find new things to learn and use this knowledge to succeed on your final assignments and exams.
Watch this video and listen to these Grade 5 students. They are part of a noon hour club in New York City. These kids have passion. They want to sing, learn be active in society. Watch their faces as they sing and the passion in their voices. The students have sung onstage with many performers and will be singing with Fleetwood Mac at Madison Square Gardens infront of 18 000 fans on June 11th.
Find your passion and succeed.
Harbeck
6 comments:
What a great post! I totally agree... if we can find out what we are passionate about in our classrooms, students will pick up on it and learn from it as well.
Great post, thank you!
Suggest Ken Robinson's book "The Element" as a terrific read.
It is all about finding your passion. The line that most captures is on the book's cover: "How finding your passion changes everything".
One of the bios in the book is about Fleetwood Mac's drummer and how he found his passion.
Again, thanks for an inspiring post.
Kent
Ed and Kent thank you for your comments. As for Sir Ken's new book I bought it for my dad and will be reading it this summer. Looking forward to it!
Hmmm... I'm wondering if my own class are suffering from the same malaise. My tandem partner and I were discussing their unsettled attitude of late and then put it to them that our class is developing a reputation throughout our school as being a "difficult class", one that other teachers would like to avoid or dread interacting with. In order to try and re-cast our collective perception of our classroom as a place of learning, not of pure socialisation, we are going to get the kids to embark on a task to advertise the merits of our class, why it is a great place to learn, why collectively they are a switched on bunch of students to work with. This will be a way of re-committing to their passion for learning, re-visiting their vision of how they want their classroom to be. Good teachers find ways to fuel passion but only the individual learner can find the key to self motivation.
Heck, we're not even half way through our school year!
Thanks for the comment Graham. Even though we can be great teachers offering great programs for students how do we get them to use the key for self motivation? Hmm I even leave the door unlocked :)
Part of the nature of the beast is that all students are different. I hope I provide needed diversity for all my learners to become self motivated and do something.
I will be interested to hear how your class promotes itself.
Always appreciate comments from you. Your insight is always appreciated.
Chris
I agree with Mr H about students being different. As teachers, we need to identify their interest and passion and "attack" them from there.
Everyone has something that they like, it is a fact. If we can connect with them through their liking, we have won half the game.
It takes time though to achieve this identification and exploration. But all is not lost, it just take times. The rewards however will be wonderful.
Maths Is Interesting!
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