Infusing your own passions into your classroom is a powerful teaching tool. I thought it sounded selfish at first, infusing what I love into my classroom. Why should my passions have anything to do with my students or with my teaching? But then I realized that passion drives one’s enthusiasm and truly motivates giving teachers “fuel” to ignite the wonder and love of learning within their students. I’ve been reading a lot about passion and enthusiasm in both books, Teach Like a PIRATE: Increase Student Engagement, Boost Your Creativity, and Transform Your Life as an Educator and The Wild Card: 7 Steps to an Educator’s Creative Breakthrough. Two inspiring books with similar ideas about infusing passion into creativity and just how powerful it could be. It allows you to be more authentic and enthusiastic in how you teach by sharing your passions with your students connecting it directly into the content. Not only is this self-fulfilling, but it helps build connections and relationships with your students.

So how do you go about infusing your passions into your teaching?

First, brainstorm about what you are truly passionate about and how could you tie it into the content you are teaching.  Sometimes we get so stuck in “curriculum and programs” that we forget to focus on the way in which we could deliver the content. Although I am extremely passionate and enthusiastic about teaching, I had to delve deeper into my personal hobbies and interests and think about what I could infuse into my teaching and classroom activities. I thought about my background in Sign Language and how I have infused that into my classroom and content. I incorporated some simple signs/hand gestures into the classroom, which is a widely used classroom management strategy that is so easy to use and implement (Sign Language/Hand Gestures Posters and Teacher Guide), taught my second grade students how to sign a few songs and poems during April’s poetry month, and led an ASL enrichment cluster in my school for students who were interested in learning ASL. I used this passion and skill I had to teach others and they loved it.

Also, for a time I was passionate about learning how to knit so I used knitting to launch my ‘how to’ writing unit while teaching steps in a process. My students loved seeing the process in action as I demonstrated it, making mistakes along the way, and created the product right in front of their eyes. They all wanted to knit something after that and praised my efforts in making my “not so perfect scarves.” 😉

And then, of course, I infused my LOVE for writing and storytelling (read about my storytelling hook here) into my classroom and my students would beg for more. Beg to hear more stories about both of my “Thanksgiving Fiascos,” the “Halloween Nightmare” and my days of “crime fighting” which was all good modeling for showing, not telling in our storytelling writing unit. I realized that I can put my passions to work and engage my students in the content at the same time.

Do you have a skill you are passionate about that you could teach others? Are you passionate about music or do you play an instrument? Bring it into the classroom. Incorporating music into your classroom has so many benefits. I wrote about how music motivates writers, which you could read here). What about art? Do you have an eye for color, design, photography? I bet you could infuse this passion into the content standards you teach. Think outside of the box. Be creative and have fun with it.

There are so many ways you could infuse your passions into your teaching. Here are some ideas from The Wild Card: 7 Steps to an Educator’s Creative Breakthrough (King & King p. 132) based on the eight intellectual types:

Visual-Spatial: architecture, space, geography, photography, origami, comic books, cartoons, graphic design, fashion design, interior design, DIY projects, books, film, video, model building, sculpting, painting, drawing

Bodily-Kinesthetic: dance, exercise, crafting, acting, pantomime, yoga, sports, health, gymnastics, cycling

Musical: rhythm, sound effects, composing songs, writing lyrics, playing an instrument, rapping, musical theater, singing

Interpersonal-Social: interacting with others, debates, dialogue, community service, social media competition, entertaining, team sports

Intrapersonal: self-reflection, meditation, yoga, mindfulness, scrapbooking, writing

Linguistic-Verbal: reading aloud, word games, storytelling, writing, humor, giving speeches, presentations, podcasts

Logical-Mathematical: solving puzzles or mysteries, philosophy, law, computer science, programming, chess, strategy based games, astronomy, engineering, scientific method, crime investigation, forensics, philosophy

Naturalistic: gardening, pets, animals, wildlife, weather, geology, farming, agriculture, insects, ecosystems, life cycles, food chains, natural resources, climate change, ecology, recycling

So where do you begin?

• Pick something you love and would like to bring into the classroom

• Connect it to the content and standards you teach

• Plan the lesson with a balance of creative delivery methods and academic rigor to drive student engagement

• Sell it with enthusiasm so your students will buy it

• Showtime! Bring your creative lessons to life—expand on it with real-world applications. See my post about room transformations here.

And when I wasn’t so passionate about a topic, like teaching the life cycle of beetles, because insects (except butterflies) are not my thing, I let my students who were passionate about six-legged creatures go to town. They handled the insects, took care of them, observed much more closely than I would have liked to, and helped keep the enthusiasm and learning going for the sake of all of us. That’s what we do…work as a team and learn as a team building on each other’s passions and interests.

By infusing your own passions and the content you teach you’ve just created magic. The magic of learning and enthusiasm for topics that your students may have not been exposed to if you hadn’t brought them into the classroom. And you’ll find that your students will do the same. I’ve had students teach us all about what they were passionate about, like the stars and planets, every make and model of antique cars, and even one who tried to teach (and convince) us to play Minecraft.

All of our passions play a role in us all developing as learners. That’s why there are so many benefits to a classroom of students. We all bring something to the table to help us grow as a learner. Each and every year I can’t wait to learn from them, in hopes that they’ll embrace my passions tied into the content I teach.

Give it a go! What are you passionate about and how will you infuse it into your teaching?

Must Reads