The Passion-Driven Classroom

A Framework for Teaching and Learning

Angela Maiers, Amy Sandvold

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781315394725
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Éducation
• Subtopic: Éducation générale

Turn your classroom into a thriving community of learners! In The Passion-Driven Classroom, bestselling authors Angela Maiers and Amy Sandvold show you how to spark and sustain your students' energy, excitement, and love of learning. This updated edition offers a new framework for changing your mindset and implementing a passion-driven classroom, where passion meets practice every day as students learn new skills and explore their talents. You'll come away with specific examples of how to set up your classroom, how to manage it, and how to assign passion projects where students take the lead. With this book, you'll be able to move away from prescription-driven learning toward Passion-Driven Learning, so you can make a real difference in the lives of your students.

Achievement Gap or Passion Gap?

A typical student takes 112 mandated standardized tests between pre-kindergarten classes and 12th grade, a new Council of the Great City Schools study found. By contrast, most countries that outperform the United States on international exams test students three times during their school careers.

—Lindsey Leyton (The Washington Post, 2015)

We still have a passion gap in schools, and it goes deeper and wider than ever before. What we claim to want and what we actually reward in practice are two very different things. The mixed signals start at the top in both private and public education. State Education Departments hold local districts and systems accountable for meeting standards at high levels at every grade level and on every standardized test. Failure to meet the established goals results in a loss of funding or accreditation.

School boards hold superintendents and chief officers responsible for producing the best academic achievement in their communities, or salaries and jobs are at stake. Administrators are pressured to produce excellent results and keep their students under control. Instructional coaches such as literacy coaches are hired to be positive supports in implementing change (Sandvold & Baxter, 2008). Instead, instructional coaches are sold to teachers as “supports,” but in reality, they are often compliance monitors in disguise (DeWitt, 2015).

Behavior referrals increase and behavior interventionists are hired because the entire school population is stressed out. The office has become a babysitting center instead of an instructional learning hub.

Teachers feel their workload is ever changing and increasing. When data on the tests aren’t measuring up, principals feel pressure to show they are doing something to fix the problem, and teachers are given another intervention to implement. Most planning periods and lunch periods are spent entering data with other teachers onto spreadsheets and having the scheduled data discussion. What does our data tell us? What should we implement and when should we do it to get each child at grade level? In reality, teachers are downloading what just happened in their classroom when Susie threw the hand sanitizer at the associate and ripped everything off of the classroom walls that she could reach.

Students are told to be creative thinkers and be a leader, yet they are spending entire days taking pre- and post-tests. Often, these tests are not at their instructional level, but they must take them anyway because that is what the “real” test will be like. When classroom misbehavior increases, teachers are told to make the lessons more engaging and to “build better relationships.” Students are told to “try harder,” and to “hit their learning target!” The lucky ones who can read the tests and perform are rewarded with coupons and parties. The others put up a wall and try to survive (or throw the hand sanitizer across the room).

Teachers go home crying several nights a week because they went to school to make a difference in student’s lives and wonder when they have time to do that in the lesson plan and on the test. As you can see in our dramatic trickledown effect of pressure, not only are students getting mixed messages, everyone is feeling the pain from the superintendent, the principal, the teacher and the student. Since starting this passion-driven journey, we have uncovered the depth of the passion gap. Just like our students, teachers disengage from the pressure and workload. According to the National Center for Education Statistics:

About 51 percent of public school teachers who left teaching in 2012–13 reported that the manageability of their workload was better in their current position than in teaching. Additionally, 53 percent of public school leavers reported that their general work conditions were better in their current position than in teaching.

What have we done to ourselves? How and why should we bring passion back into the equation for everyone?

Listening to Our Students

We know we often fail at reaching the heart, as evidenced in the following list of phrases heard daily from the mouths of our students:

Do we have to do this?

Is this for a grade?

How many pages?

Not again.

When are we ever going to use this stuff?

I HATE school! School is jail.

We rarely hear the phrases:

THIS ROCKS!

Soooo Cool!

LOVE it!

Give me more!

UN-BEEEEE-LIEV-ABLE!!!

I’m not done yet! I need more time to make it better!

Wow, you have got to see this!

This is so amazing—let me show you!

Look what I learned!

You will not believe what I can do!

This is cause for alarm. These common and seemingly innocent comments are strong indicators that disengagement from rigorous intellectual endeavor is the norm. They confirm that students are going through the motions, following the rules, and interacting with content that holds little meaning for them. Most compelling is that these simple comments illustrate the canyon-sized gap that exists between the learning we have and the learning we desire. This gap is significantly separated by one intangible, unquantifiable, and undeniably important variable: PASSION.

Merriam-Webster defines passion in this way: “intense, driving, or overmastering feeling or conviction,” and “a strong liking or desire for or devotion to some activity, object, or concept.” Passion hooks our learners into making a commitment to their education each day. The gap between what learners are doing now and what they have potential to accomplish if passion were a part of the equation is what we call the Passion Gap. The Passion Gap is dangerous for everyone—from burning out our talented and gifted students to ignoring the ones in the middle to alienating and ostracizing those with behavioral, cognitive, or other challenges. Worst of all is having students who just plain give up.

We are losing millions of students and teachers in this gap. They are falling hard and fast. Learners like first grader, Houston, are just beginning to fall:

Houston is passionate about trucks, cars, and superheroes; struggles a bit with reading; and has an average I.Q. Interestingly, he barely meets ­minimum requirements for first grade. He comes to school and plays the game. He sits through calendar time getting the big idea that it’s about the days of the week, counting and patterns; yet, the truth is, he really doesn’t care. He thinks, “What’s the big deal? It’s Wednesday. I can look at the calendar myself. The teacher-lady will tell me what day it is anyway.” He goes through the motions of “sounding out” the short vowels and reading the guided book of the week, Dan Can Fa...