Passion Projects

I am always looking for ways to inspire my students and promote learning in my classroom. The biggest obstacle I often face is school itself. Whether its curriculum, rules, schedules, standardized tests or the host of other things that get in the way of inspired learning, there is always appears to be some obstacle. The past two years I have been fortunate to offer my students a day of unfiltered learning that was driven by their passions and interests in the form of Innovation Day. For me, it always kind of bothered me that this day only happened one time during the school year. I wanted a way to have this notion of learning exist in my classroom more regularly and this year I am giving something new a try.

Two weeks ago I introduced my students to something a colleague and I are calling “Passion Projects”. We committed a day a week (which is a class period in a junior high setting) to allow kids to work on these projects. To start, we asked our students what they were passionate about. What did they want to be when they grew up? If they had unrestricted time and resources to learn about something, what would that be? As a class we talked through the answers to these questions and started designing projects and learning activities based on their interests. Below is the first list of topics that was generated by my students during their first brainstorm.

• Music
• Environmental impacts on testing
• Entertaining
• Ocean
• Building
• Website design
• Interior Decorating
• Fishing
• Photobooks/Photography
• Acting
• Writing
• Engineering
• Dinosaurs
• Dancing ballerina
• Cooking, chef
• Perform-drama-skits
• Occupational Therapy
• Marine biology
• Animals
• Basketball
• Swimming animals
• Game design
• Meteorology

Now some of these we are working with and creating into “doable” projects within the parameters of our school day and physical space. Outside of that, I have given them very few restrictions. One requirement I gave them is that I want them to keep a learning journal in some form to reflect on their learning. The other thing I asked them to do is share their work with their peers a few times over the course of the year. I told them I will provide feedback and guidance but never a grade or evaluation.

My goal is for students to pursue something they are passionate about and may never get a chance within a school to study. One way I hope to further inspire them is to use my social media “superpowers” to connect my students with some experts or professionals in some of the above topics. For example, I am already working on connecting my young meteorologist with one of the stars of Discovery’s show Stormchasers. I truly want to inspire these kids to think outside of the box and find something to be passionate about. If are or know somebody that is connected to one of these fields please leave me a comment as I would love to talk with you.

I look forward to sharing this journey with my students and sharing their successes and spectacular failures along the way. 

Be There

The other day I took my son to his swim lesson. This is something I have done numerous times with both of my boys and they really love being in the water. Their lessons are thirty minutes long and I normally bring a book, the iPad, or laptop to get some work or reading done during the boy’s lessons. However, as I sat there this week I looked up from my game of Words With Friends to notice my son looking up at me. He said, “Daddy, did you see that?”

I did what every father would have done in that situation. I replied with an enthusiastic, “Of course I did buddy, good job!”

For the remainder of his lesson I put my phone away and ignored my texts, emails, games, Facebook and Twitter updates. I just watched my son swim and noticed just how many times he looked up to me to see that I was watching. It was clear that every time he looked at me, he was checking to see that I was watching and seeking my approval.

As I was watching my son swim, I looked around to the other parents in the pool area. Nearly every single one of them had their heads buried in a device of some sort. Mom’s checking their phones and iPads or dads reading books and checking emails. Kids were looking up for an approving look and were instead greeted by the top of a head or the back of a device. I made my mind up then that I would, “be there” when my sons look up for that approving thumbs up or nod of the head.

With this idea of being there in mind, I reflected on my work in the classroom with my students. How many times are my students working on something and I sneak to my desk to grade something? When my students are struggling and look up to me and my head is in a computer updating a grade book, what message am I sending? If a student is doing something they are proud of and I am replying to emails, how do they feel?  My goal is to return to work next week and be there…less time doing the managerial work that I need to do, but be among the kids more. I want to watch them work and be there to encourage them, support them, and give them the thumbs up when they look to me.