Any good teacher would tell you the importance of being excited about the content and learning experiences that you are orchestrating in your classroom. You want to be excited to learn along with your students and show them the passion that you have for learning in general and your subject in particular. Great teachers are life-long learners.
Some barriers to maintaining this passion is that school is compulsory and teaching is a job that does not always provide the ideal environment for teachers to develop. Within a context of a compulsory education system (that often lacks support and adequate leadership) with an emphasis on meeting discrete standards while working with adolescents who are in the process of figuring out who they are, it can be difficult to maintain and model a passion for learning for 181 days out of 181 days. Within any professional field, it is important to find ways to rejuvenate. Books, like Thrive, are being written on this very topic.
Over my spring break, I talked with a couple adult friends of mine about their experiences in school. They said that their best teachers the ones who were excited about teaching and learning almost everyday. I love to learn, so how do I maintain this value of learning in my classroom everyday when I am also only human?
This is a relevant question to be asking at the end of May when everyone in a school has some fatigue. I still want to emphasize that learning is an ongoing, life-long process that will not shut down after a few weeks. This passion for learning speaks to the importance of teachers being intellectuals and writers of their own curriculum given the context in which they work. Teaching really needs to be a fun and engaging job. What does it say about the profession when teachers get burned out and stop teaching?
