What’s your passion?

Do you feel your stomach going into a knot? Is your heart beating faster? Are you scared of being ‘outed’ as an imposter – someone who doesn’t have a passion?

Or, do you find this question easy to answer, knowing that your entire being and your identity is rooted in that one thing that you love. You are like Michelangelo, Einstein, Steve Jobs, Walt Disney, or Mother Theresa – you devote your life to your passion.

Or, do you answer with something that you enjoy doing? “Yeah, I like to golf.”

In education we are using the word ‘passion’ a lot lately. We know that deep and meaningful learning happens when we are enthusiastic and genuinely interested in something. As good teachers, we want to personalize learning and create rich experiences, so we ask our students to name their passion. Yikes! Other than the soccer players and the odd artist, most students freeze when asked this question. It’s intimidating. It implies a devotion to an activity, object or concept. Most children aren’t devoted to any one thing. Nor do we want them to be. Their job is to explore, discover, inquire, question, and create.  The things they like to investigate and learn about change constantly. You might get the best answers from our kindergarten students, when, in one week, the same student might answer that question differently every day, “Dinosaurs!” “Bugs!” “Building blocks!” “Books!” “Mud!”

Benjamin Todd’s advice in his TEDx talk, To Find Work You Love, Don’t Follow Your Passion suggests that the phrase “follow your passion” gets it backward. Rather than following your passion, he says, do something that is valuable, get good at it, and passion will follow you. Focus on building skills that genuinely help others and make the world a better place. His equation:

Explore + Get good at flexible skills + Solve pressing problems = Happiness/Passion.

Instead of asking students to identify their passion we can help them find great problems to solve and guide them to develop the skills to solve them. Let’s provoke them until they feel that fire igniting, you know the one, the desire to learn, to create, and to become really good at something. And when they are good at something, create opportunities for them to use those skills to help others. Students love to share expertise and help others. Imagine a community of students who aspire to become experts so they can make the world a better place.

When I was in University, I didn’t know what I wanted to do. I fell into teaching due to an offer I couldn’t refuse. At first I did it. Then I liked it. Then I got good at it. I got better at it. And as I got better at it and because I developed these skills, I grew to love teaching and I became passionate about learning more to help our students.

Terri Trespicio, in her TEDx Talk Stop Searching for Your Passion, suggests that passion is where your energy and effort meet someone else’s need. “To live a life full of meaning and value, you don’t follow your passion, your passion follows you.” My passion definitely followed me.