What drives your passion

This week I have had the opportunity to think about what it is that drives my passion. I was able to attend a free talk by the amazing John Bell, Australian actor and Director of the Bell Shakespeare Company. He has been involved in Acting and Directing Shakespeare plays for over 35 years and yet he never tires of it. He has changed with the times and is happy to play in modern costume to make the performance more relevant to modern young audiences. His passion for his craft drives what he does and he seeks high quality in what he does.

I have found that this really resonated with me as I seek make lessons engaging yet challenging enough for students that allow them to grow in their learning journey. I enjoy the experiential component of learning and find that when I discover something for myself I retain that skill more so than being shown. There is a balance that needs to be found between teaching students new stuff and providing the skills needed to discover new knowledge for themselves and making connections as to how that fits into the topic that is being studied. 


Having passion about something doesn't just come from having an interest in it. It is much more than that. Coming from a family of work-a-holics I know that you must work at it and there will be mistakes along the way but perseverance is something that will make the journey worthwhile. In order to maintain my professional standards yet still drive my passion I need to stay current with where education is going in terms of the latest research and technology and ensure my material is relevant for the ever changing generations of students that I will teach. 
  

The other experience of passion that I discovered was in a Twitter chat I was involved in. #ozengchat started on Tuesday night for about an hour at 8:30pm and many Oz English teachers jumped on board to share their ideas on digital storytelling. They were not paid. They freely shared their ideas with other teachers to the benefit of all Australian students. There was no distinction between Public and Private schools but merely a combined desire to improve teaching and engagement of all students. This commitment to learning and sharing has so inspired me to be a better teacher. I appreciate this new community I have joined and love communicating with other like minded teachers.


Those of you who have been following my journey to start my business I have managed to run another two training courses for teachers who wanted to learn how to use technology and ipads in the classroom. They were very successful and now I feel I am ready to present my courses to the Teachers Institute for accreditation. 


Am going to TAFE next week to see what I need to do to prepare for the courses I will teach in a few weeks. I am feeling a little overwhelmed by the amount of work that needs to be done but have discovered that taking one day at a time is the best approach. 


Now to my favorite websites for the week;
http://paper.li/ - Makes a newspaper from all your tweets on twitter
http://paper.li/vivimat78/1326755129#!tag-ozengchat If your an English teacher check out the #ozengchat site

Really enjoyed this clip. 
What drives your passion?
Until next week,
K