Part 2

The other day I blogged about using a team building exercise to help staff share their passions. So what did this activity produce? In my humble opinion, teachers have a greater understanding for how their passion is not something they should check at the front door of the school.

Many teachers reported to me that they are excited to share their passions with the children. I look forward to seeing some projects such as:

• TED talks for kids
• Comedy channel, or even a comedy night
• Knitting
• Formal Tea
• Student photography
• and the list goes on and on!

The second part of the exercise was to begin a process of working with the students on what THEY are passionate about.

As I walked around the classrooms during the first two days, I saw so many cool activities that were designed to learn from the students such as:

• (Older grades) writing about something they are interested
• An icebreaker (our 5th grade did this) Truth, Truth, Lie – Kids had to interview each other and determine what was the truth and what was the lie.. Very cool!
• One grade level took pictures of each student and they will be writing about their passions
• Another grade level recorded each student and will make a movie for Back to School Night
• An idea that works well in the younger grades was the “Passion” bag – Teachers modeled this by bringing in their bag to present to the kids, and then they will be bringing in their bags!

So many great things, so many great ideas, and all of this is designed to help our students generate passion for learning (and some pretty cool genius hours). I look forward to reporting out more progress!