A Teacher-Passions Worksheet
This Teacher-Passions Worksheet will help you move from Personal Passions to Inspirational Teaching. It will help you find the spark that will ignite the flame of engagement in your students.
Finding your "teacher-passions" is critical! Teaching a subject you love can fill a child’s imagination with wonder! Why? Because you also have a sense of wonder about it! That’s what brought you to establish a hobby, read and learn about it, or simply to find great pleasure in the experiences.
My first teaching partner was an avid reader. Reading was just one of her teacher-passions, and she shared it brilliantly with our students! The fun part was that she classified the books she read according to where she read them! I’ll never forget the first time I heard her talk about a “beach book”, something to be devoured on a lazy afternoon in the sun with the waves' crashing sounds filling the air. Nothing heavy. A page-turner. A guilty-pleasure.
That same teacher partner could share her teacher-passions, the love of reading, like no other before or since…that’s saying something after more than 25 years and lots of teaching partners! She could help a student care about a character, to want to know them and, most importantly, to want to read and read and READ! Her teacher-passions around everything that reading could enhance in one's life were clear and evident to us all!
This little questionnaire is intended to help you dream of the very real possibility of sharing your true passion with your students in a way that will inspire them to join you!
My Not-so-Secret Loves: A Teacher Passions Worksheet
Hobbies:
- Do you have hobbies?
- What are they?
- How much time do you spend with them each day, week or month?
- Would you like to spend more time with them?
Interests:
- What was the last book you read to learn something new?
- What was the last book you read for pleasure?
- Do you have a favorite author?
Connecting to Cosmic:
- How do your hobbies and interests connect you to the “greater scheme of things”?
- Have you defined your cosmic task?
- How do your hobbies and interests connect to your cosmic task?
- What would your students enjoy about this particular topic or hobby?
- What academic subjects could connect to the hobby? (Ex. I shared my love of sewing with my upper elementary students one year and included lessons on measuring, quilt design/geometry, math operations, fractions, practical life, art, reading, writing, and history…it was quite a list of connections that all touched on the Fundamental Human Needs related to clothing, materials available, and the garment’s purpose and style during a particular time in history.)
Once you’ve completed this little reflection, I trust you will be inspired to design a lesson (or several) that will give your students a renewed understanding of interdependence and a real “use” for the math, reading and writing we hope they will want to practice every day to build their mastery!