Passion In and Out of the Classroom

In the classroom, students succeed when they see that their teacher loves what they are doing and are teaching the class in an interesting way. When teachers have a negative attitude and are not excited about what they are doing, that attitude rubs off on the students. When a teacher is excited about what they are teaching, the students become excited well.

I know that my sixth grade teacher has a true passion for teaching. She always made class interesting and fun. At that age, students need help staying on task and they don't want to work if what they are doing is boring. That was never the case in my sixth grade class. My teacher was always excited for the school day and about what she was teaching. Looking back, whenever classmates were asked who their favorite teacher was, her name was always mentioned. When asked why, many said it was because there was always an activity that we did that was related to the lesson. She made the classes that she was teaching so much fun. We did a significant amount of our learning through creative work. There are two activities that stand out in my mind from sixth grade which were meant to help us with our writing and math skills. For one of the activities, we were put into groups to write stories which we presented to our class, after we each made puppets to go along with our characters. Around Christmas time, we also made gingerbread houses and the lesson in this project was to learn how to measure perimeter, area, etc. of the house that we built. She was always going above and beyond what was expected to find interesting ways for us to learn the information.

I was also able to see her passion for teaching from a different perspective than the other students because she is my mom. Most students don't realize the amount of work that teachers put in outside of the classroom, but with my mom, I saw everything that she did at home to get ready for her class. She taught herself how to use the new Smart Boards and began teaching other teachers how to use them. Some teachers did not put the effort into learning how to do it, but I think that when teachers put the effort into learning new teaching methods, they are truly benefiting the students because the lives of the students in this generation revolve around technology. When teachers are willing to put in the work to enhance their way of teaching, I believe that shows true passion for teaching and for their students.

Every year, at the end of the school year, my mom has a picnic with all of her students. They have a big field trip that they go on within the last week of school and after the field trip, the whole class comes to our house for a picnic. Not only do they have picnic, but she always has games set up and has activities organized for the kids. Many teachers would not want to do something like this with 25 sixth grade students, but she enjoys it every year. I think that a passionate teacher is involved in their students' lives and are willing to go out of their way to learn various ways of teaching to benefit their students. Students see the passion that their teachers put in during the school day, but most don't see the passion that occurs outside the classroom.