Brain, Education, and Inquiry - Fall, 2010: Session 14E

I was reading Jessica's post above thinking how often I am the opposite of her in that I make connections out loud and am that person who shares what I'm thinking at any given moment, even if it's not well formed.  In fact, I think that I've become self-conscious of this aspect of myself and have had to learn how to keep my mouth shut (which can be difficult for my extroverted self).  I think that this is one of the precise difficulties of being a teacher and figuring out how to make material applicable to real life things and also how to gauge if a child has made that connection if they are not extroverted.  There has to be a line somewhere between personal anecdotal information that is shared in the goal of making information more emotional and applicable and personal information that may get a bit too personal.  Children do not have this ability to delineate between appropriate and not, which is why young children will ask any strage/crazy question or make a comment without remorse.  So, the dilemma for teachers is how to cultivate the curiosity that young children have and come up with new ways for them to express themselves (if a student is not a verbal learner and would rather write, for example) that makes the information that's being taught personal in some way.  Maybe it's taking 5 minutes to draw a picture of what they think of when a new concept is introduced, even if it's multiplication, for example, because then the student has that personal image in their mind as the information is being taught to them and it becomes more memorable.  This way, even if a student isn't passionate about multiplication, they remember that they learned it and what image they had in their mind when it was introduced. Every child doesn't have to be passionate about everything but they are more knowledgeable about what they are not passionate about when they associate information with a personal story/memory/idea which they are able to call upon at a later point in time when the given topic comes up again.

Let's propose the question: what role does passion play in students' learning and the classroom dynamic?

As Simone suggests, emotional and personal elements are always present in the classroom, be them students' or teachers'. The western tradition of thinking separates reason from passion. Their cooperation obviously promotes one's quality of learning. But their discordance hinders one's ability and motivation to learn. One proposal is to let the students learn what they are passionate about. This way they will not only learn better they will also enjoy the process better and feel better about themselves. Leaving the practical implementation aside for the moment, there's the concern of how one's passion develops. Is passion cultivated through a particular kind of learning or is passion more or less innate or is passion substantially the influence of one's environment? It seems to me we need to get a better idea of this concern before deciding on how to best incorporate it into our learning. I will try to get a preliminary idea by reflecting on how I came to be passionate about certain things in my life. At the very basis is the elementary curiosity we all possess. What I came to love and became constitutive of my personhood was subject to the available relevant sources and people to encourage and sustain the love. My love for learning (although not always in the classroom) went through a series of conditioning accompanied by self-reflection. How did I learn what things are worthy of pursuit? I did not, at least not on my own. I looked at the available fun things in my life; some entertain the body, some entertain the mind and some do a amazing job entertaining both. The fact that I came to value the cultivating of mind and character more than bodily pleasure is a product of the influence of a nexus of people and forces which I can not fully trace. During that process I also judged the value of each choice and reflected on who I want to be. If I were left alone to do whatever I wanted to do I would probably turn out very differently, could be for better or for worse. There were so many opportunities for me to go astray. I think allowing students to pursue their true passion is great but that  entails that students know what their true passions are. There is the further complication that not all passions are worthy of pursuit, some are even harmful.