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Are You Connected With Your Education Passion?

By Megan M. Allen — May 12, 2017 2 min read
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Are you connected with your education passion?

Passion. That thing that gets you hopping out of bed early in the morning, without hitting the snooze button once. That thing that keeps you working on a project, well into the night and past the regular hours of work. That thing that makes your heart go pitter-patter, beat a little faster, and makes you feel connected with the world, reminding you that youhave a meaningful and important part to play.

You know what I’m talking about.

I’ve been thinking a lot about passion, writing about it in last week’s blog as it pertains to our leadership work. Finding that for many of us, we may be questioning whether passion or necessity drives our work.

I think that if we don’t stay connected to our passions, those things that make our heart skip-a-beat, we can lose a little bit of our drive. We may be missing out on the pep in our step. And we can fizzle with our day-to-day work if we don’t dip into the passion bucket every once in a while. I think passion and joy go hand-in-hand, and we need to stay connected with passion to experience joy in all parts of our lives.

How can we stay connected to our passion? How do we pinpoint our passion if we may have even forgotten what it is?

Fear no more! I have a tool to help you reflect on these very questions.

Behold, the Passion Education Map.

Image

Special thanks to my colleague Wendi Pillar, who is the artistic superhero and co-conspirator behind this crazy idea (and be sure to check out her new book on visual note-taking for students here!).

Directions:


  1. Fill out the sentence stems on the passion map. No holds barred, go for it! Fill in the blanks with ideas, and if you aren’t smiling at the end of this, you are doing it wrong.
  2. Place a marker (sticky note, penny, finger, pen cap...whatever!) on the first spot (marked with a number one).
  3. Compare what’s written in number one with number two. Which one could you not live without? Go with your gut on this. Your first thought.
  4. Place the marker on the winner, the one item between the two that you cannot live without.
  5. Compare the winer with what is written in number three. Which one can you not live without?
  6. Continue around the board until you have only one item left.

Now the biggest and best part, reflecting at the end.


  • What does this make you think about?
  • How does this align to your work in the classroom? Out of the classroom?
  • What might this mean for you going forward?

For me, I reconnected with one of my truths. I love nature! Animals, plants, science, the world around us. And I’ve moved away from that passion as I’ve moved out of the classroom. So I’m actively thinking about how my leadership work can involve that piece of my passion. And just reflecting on how the two might dovetail makes my heart go pitter-patter.

I’d love to hear your thinking to the questions above, or how you are thinking about adapting this to the classroom with your own students. Enjoy and report back!

Special thanks to an episode of Oprah I watched in the 1990’s that made me think about passion in life! This is adapted from an idea from Oprah.

Photo credit: Wendi Pillar

The opinions expressed in An Edugeek’s Guide to K-12 Practice and Policy are strictly those of the author(s) and do not reflect the opinions or endorsement of Editorial Projects in Education, or any of its publications.