Igniting the Passion!

This year our school was so incredibly fortunate to have Angela Maiers kick off our professional development for the year!  Angela spoke about the importance of recognizing the genius that is surrounding you and leveraging that genius to overcome obstacles and do amazing things.  In particular, her practice of choosing 5 people in her life everyday and celebrating something they do, really resonated with a lot of our teachers.  Taking the time to acknowledge and value that each student matters is especially relevant when dealing with my school's population of adult immigrant students.  Our students often feel that they arrive to this country with a lot of deficits and may often feel forgotten or unimportant.  Choosing to recognize 5 students everyday for something they have done (in or out of the classroom) is a simple task that has the power to transform how our students view themselves and their capabilities.  We need to remind our students, in Angela's words,

"You come with assets, you don't have deficits".

Anglea Maiers and Me!!!

I am excited to place more of an emphasis on recognizing and celebrating genius in my classroom this year as a compliment to the Passion Projects I will be completing with my students.  My students last semester displayed a great deal of confidence in their language use as the semester progressed.  By making a concerted effort to recognize EVERY student's genius and achievements, I believe that students will accomplish tasks with even less inhibition.  A more confident student, one who approaches language learning without fear of failure, achieves more.

With that in mind, we as educators need to lead our students without fear of failure.  Transforming your classroom from a "traditional classroom" to a "passion based classroom" is scary.  Last year when I decided to transform my class using ideas from Angela Maiers and Amy Sandvold's book "The Passion Driven Classroom", I was very nervous.  I couldn't find anyone else in adult education using this model.  I was alone and definitely scared of failure.  But I knew this approach to learning made the most sense for my students.  So with support from the genius hour community and my school leadership, I swallowed my fears and went for it.  And it was worth EVERY ounce of effort.

This is not to say that I am not nervous about entering this venture again with my new students.  However, to calm my nerves, I find it useful to remind myself of this: In life, we learn and grow so much more from our "failures" than anything else.  When things go exactly as planned, we don't sit down and take the time to think "How can I improve?  What did I learn about myself? What will I do next time?"  Everyone fails. (Check out 50 famous/successful people who failed at first) But when we do, we must have the ability to reflect on these failures and find a way to turn them into successes.  Angela Maiers said to our staff

  "who you emulate is who you'll be". 

Our students seek to emulate us so we need to be great. Being great doesn't involve using the same lessons you've been using for the past 15 years.  Being great means finding something you are passionate about, taking risks, trying something new and pursuing your passion.  Don't be afraid of failure because from failure grows great success.

Check out more awesome failure = success quotes here!