The 12 Indicators: #1 - Empower Students to Pursue Their Passions

So, I mentioned in a post a while ago that I am forcing myself to sit down and write a book. The premise is essentially how to lay down a classroom foundation that is a breeding ground for meaningful innovation. I emphasize meaningful because so often I see the flashy projects or the fancy Instagram teacher showing off what their students made, but...a lot of the time, these attempts at innovation seem to lack the substance needed to truly change the educational experience for students.

So, I took a lot of time reflecting and spent a lot more time researching, and I've identified twelve indicators of meaningful innovation. The indicators are based on what students are being empowered to do in the classroom, and then we'll look at the foundational elements that must be in place for that to happen.

So, without further ado, here's indicator 1:

Students in innovative classrooms are empowered to discover and pursue their passions and interests.

Let me start by emphasizing why this is so important. Every year my freshmen do a variation of a project guided by the following prompt: How can you make a difference in the world by helping out someone in need?

I start with a writing prompt where I ask students to identify what matters to them, what they're passionate about. And for the first few years, it was horrifying. Hardly anybody started writing. There were so many blank looks. You could sense the discomfort in the room. Kids were just looking at each other with shrugs. 

I was initially appalled. I had thirty-ish students, and for the most part, none of them knew what they were passionate about. None of them seemed to have the awareness they needed to recognize that there are huge issues in the world. I blamed them. I blamed social media. I blamed the entertainment age. 

But, then I realized something. 

It's not their fault. They didn't choose to be oblivious. Honestly, it's sort of the world we live in. People spend more time entertaining themselves than they do informing themselves. We spend more time arguing online than we do building empathy. 

Well, where is the place where students are supposed to go to develop the things they need to be successful in the world. The answer: school. The reality: probably not school, at least in this regard. 

Think about it: how are students ever supposed to know what they care about if they are constantly being told what matters. 

I've never cared about something because someone told me to care about it. (Probably a character flaw, but I think it's one a lot of us have.) Moreover, not only are they told what to care about, but rarely do they get the amount of choice or the space to explore that is needed to truly begin developing passions for the world. We tell them what to do. We tell them what to learn. We tell them how to do it. 

When I realize this, and then think back on my students sitting in awkward silence trying to figure out what they're passionate about, I realized that far too often we've failed students here. 

We are sending graduating seniors out into the world without a purpose. Too many of them rack up student loans only to drop out because they haven't found their passion. Just as concerning, too many of them make it through college and end up in careers they hate because they discovered their passion too late. 

I'm not saying that every student will be able to pursue their passion in their career, but I am saying that in order for everyone to be happy and fulfilled in life, they need to understand what their passion is and be able to pursue it somehow. 

How does this relate to innovation that is meaningful in the classroom?

Here's the deal. Projects are cool, but projects don't change lives. Learning is great, but learning without caring about why you're learning just results in good test-takers. 

For innovative experiences to be as meaningful as possible in the classroom, we must (1) be constantly providing students experiences and space to both discover and reflect on their passions, and (2) be providing choices in the learning experience that allow students to engage in their passions. 

Foundation 1: Developing Passions

When was the last time you had students reflect on the suffering both in their own lives and in the lives of people around them? I know that sounds like a terrible classroom experience, but I mean it. (I'm adding a note here to please be mindful of how this is done. This could be incredible rough for some students. Avoid any sort of mandatory sharing, but possible open the door for optional sharing, as that could be something that sparks empathy and passion in another student.)

The other side of the coin with this is how are we helping students reflect on the things in life that bring them true joy? I don't mean the temporary, fleeting joys or the dopamine-filled experiences on social media, but I mean real, true joy. 

And finally, how often are you connecting students with people who are incredibly passionate about something? Are students seeing what change-makers do and how they are positively impacting the world?

Think about the important issues that matter to you. For me, one of those things is the outdoors. Why do I care about it? Because I've had strong personal experiences of watching things in nature die (as a child, I cried at numerous squirrel burials - not kidding), because I've had strong positive experiences of getting to be outside in nature, and because I've gotten connected with other people who share those values with me.

Think about how you've developed your passions. Did someone tell you to be passionate about it? Um, my guess is no. You've probably had either strong positive or negative experiences around them, which then pushed you to connect with other people with similar experiences, which encouraged you and gave you the confidence and community to be able to do something about it. 

That's how we develop our passions: authentic experiences followed by reflection and connection to others with shared experiences so that we are empowered to make a difference. 

So then, what is our role as educators? Well, ideally we aren't providing students with horrible experiences in the classroom (though, I do know more than one teachers who has a passion for education as a result of something like that), but we can control a few things that will help students identify their passions:

1. Are we providing time for reflection? I don't mean just on learning. I mean, are we providing students time to process through their experiences to identify intense feelings or experiences that have shaped them? 
2. Are we encouraging connection and community? Yes, I mean that within our own classrooms, but I also mean it outside of the classroom. If there is a student who is passionate about drawing, can we connect them with an artist who can talk to them about possibilities there? If we have students interested in science, are you inspiring them to pursue their passion by having a video chat with a real scientist? Passions die when kids don't see them as a reality, and sometimes they need us to show them that it's a reality. 
3. Are we modeling and pursuing empathy every day? Empathy spurs passion more than anything else I've found. I have had students create an entire social media campaign to get people to go visit people in nursing homes (at the time of writing this, please don't go to nursing homes with COVID19 going on). Why? Because we watched a video of someone in a nursing home explaining how lonely it can be. We talked about how that must feel. When we understand the experience of someone else, we are more likely to develop a passion around that topic.

So, that's step one. Creating experiences and environments that foster student reflection in a way that helps them see what matters. 

Foundation 2: Pursuing Their Passions

If we encourage students to find their passions and then never allow them to pursue them, it's the same as if we brought in a big bag of candy and then never let them have any of it. Passions die if they aren't pursued, yet so often in schools, we have standardized things to the point where students can't pursue their passions. Then, we wonder why they don't have them. 

Here's the part I'll say to start off: this isn't Lord of the Flies. The goal isn't to throw kids together in a room, yell, "Figure it out," and then lock the door. (Though, not that I've typed it, I'm super curious to see what would happen.) 

The key is in the ways we are incorporating choice into the class. Step one is to start giving students choices, but in order for choice to really be a factor that leads to meaningful innovation, these choices need to facilitate students' pursuit of their passions. If the choices we're offering students are just between things we've decided for them, we aren't truly teaching them how to pursue their passions. So often, in order to pursue our passions, we need to learn how to lead, not just how to follow. When we provide predetermined choices for students, we're asking them to choose how they would like to follow us. The problem is that if we are truly empowering students to pursue their passions, we have to train them to be a leader, not just of their own lives, but also the lives of others. 

What does this look like? 

Well, I'm stopping this blog here because I've already written about meaningful choice in the classroom. To read on, check out this blog about student choice.

Final Thoughts:

Picture a classroom where every student knew what they were passionate about and were actively pursuing it as part of their learning. No more D-level work, no more pulling teeth trying to get students to engage, no more hearing the question, "Why do we need to do this?" 

Because if every student is pursuing their passion, the answer to why students are doing something is this: "Because you matter, your passions matter, and if you act on them, you can change the world."

That's the message I want to send to my students every. single. day.