Shining Eyes of Passion

School’s out for summer - yet for many --more learning is happening in shorter periods of time than happened during the 180 day school year. Having just spent a week with 22 girls during TechSavvy Girls summer camp and another week with 32 middle school kids during TechSavvy Kids summer camp, I started to think about what makes summer camp so much more engaging than school. Surely it takes more than replacing the word “school” with the word “camp”… to transforms the experience. Why is it that we would rather spend time at “summer camp” than “summer school”.

• Is it because there are no bells that tell us it’s time to move to the next station and we have larger blocks of time to immerse ourselves into our learning?
• Is it because there are no mandates that create solid boundaries about what will and will not be learned and how we should learn it?
• Is it because there are no test and quizzes that try to quantify how much we remembered about what we learned?
  

No… I don’t think it’s the absence of something; but rather the ‘presence’ of an important element – PASSION!

A week long experience where talented passionate instructors focused on creating fun filled experiences that pass on that passion to others --– whether it be humanities camp, chess camp, outdoor camp—will yield lots of learning, lots of eager smiles, and lots of shining eyes.

And for those of you who think that this formula only works when learners themselves are passionate about the subject – think again as you watch the masterful Benjamin Zander create an understanding and appreciation for classical music amongst the unsuspecting audience of the T.E.D. 2008 conference.






Consider your role as a teacher as you listen to Zander describe his role as a conductor.

“The conductor of an orchestra doesn’t make a sound..
He depends for his power on his ability to make other people powerful.

My job was to awaken possibilities in other people..
How do you know if you are doing it
Look at their eyes.. if their eyes are shiny you know you're doing it

If not.. you should ask..
Who am I being that my players eyes are not shiny?”

What do you need to do this summer to come back to school in September ready to bring out the shine in your student's eyes?


Do you need to immerse yourself into a new experience that lights your fire? Do you need to do something new you’ve always wanted to try – and reflect on the parts of it that make your eyes smile as you do it ?

Do you need to immerse yourself into the powerful words of writer who allows you to escape into the passions of their experience? Perhaps escape to Italy, India, and Indonesia with Elizabeth Gilbert in Eat, Pray Love or to a village in Afghanistan’s with Greg Mortenson in Three Cups of Tea.

Do you need to immerse yourself into an experience that takes you out of your comfort zone? Every couple of years I try to learn something that I’m not naturally good at or perhaps even fear. In the past few years I’ve tried tennis lessons, swing dance lessons, and motorcycle riders classes. Each of these has helped make me a better teacher by helping me tune in on what it takes to bring a reluctant learner’s fear of failure to a state of confidence and success. Success doesn’t mean I’ll ever play in a tennis tournament, participate in a dance competition or drive a motorcycle in real traffic, but it means I gained an appreciation for those who have passion for each of these activities in real life.

Do you need to immerse yourself into a self study of some new technique or tool that might engage your students when they return to your classroom this Fall? Pay attention to the young people around you this summer and notice what they are passionate about.

• Take note of the little white buds in their ears and think about how you might be able to bring ipods or other mp3 players into their learning environment.
  
• Take note of their thumb typing skills and consider ways to use cell phones as a learning tool.
  
• Take note of how they interact with the web and look for websites that bring the same type of interactivity elements to their learning.
  
• Take note of the messages in Darren Draper’s Pay Attention Video and the related Transforming Teaching Through Technology tutorials and strategies and challenge yourself to select one new technology tool to play with this summer that could transform one of your lessons into an engaging experience that bring a shine into your students eyes.
  
  
  

Behold the clash of civilizations

In 1993 political scientist Samuel P. Huntington wrote an article in Foreign Affairs titled, "The Clash of Civilizations?" In it he wrote:

It is my hypothesis that the fundamental source of conflict in this new world will not be primarily ideological or primarily economic. The great divisions among humankind and the dominating source of conflict will be cultural. Nation states will remain the most powerful actors in world affairs, but the principal conflicts of global politics will occur between nations and groups of different civilizations. The clash of civilizations will dominate global politics. The fault lines between civilizations will be the battle lines of the future.

Fifteen years after he penned those words, they still offer both insight as well as challenges to many of the conceptions we maintain about politics and international relations. Just as cultural fault lines arguably divide much of the world in a geopolitical sense, cultural fault lines also define a growing chasm between the environment in many of our U.S. schools and the environments outside them. This chasm is readily apparent in the latest RadioShack circular delivered to my home mailbox in Oklahoma today.



As thousands of K-12 students and teachers prepare to return to fall classes in a few weeks in the United States, commercial advertisers are carefully crafting messages to woo adults as well as young people into their stores to make purchases for the upcoming school year. In many cases, but certainly not all, students will be returning to school environments where cell phones are banned. In one of our Oklahoma districts northwest of the Oklahoma City metro area, students are fined monetarily on an increasing scale every time they are caught with a cell phone at school.



Like a concealed weapon, cell phones are considered by many school board members, administrators and teachers as dangerous, inappropriate items to bring into the school environment.



If cell phones are brought to school (as they are and will be in many cases, of course) school rules may dictate they can only be used outside of the building. Rather than encourage students to learn responsible and appropriate cell phone use habits and etiquette, many schools this year will take what they perceive to be a more efficient and easier approach to the challenges posed by cell phones and continue banning them entirely. The suggestion that cell phones can and should be used as powerful learning tools would, in many cases, fall on deaf administrative ears unwilling to even consider such pedagogical heresy.

Contrast these school environments anathema to the presence of cell phones in the hands of teenagers to the following RadioShack advertisement from today:

ONE DAY THEY'RE TEETHING, THE NEXT THEY'RE TEXTING.
How can a kid survive these days without a wireless phone? Imagine how hard it would have been for you to get by without bellbottoms. Same thing. Don't let your child suffer, because during the school year, a wireless phone will be multipurpose. They're going to need to call you to come pick them up after school, or to bring them their cleats for soccer practice. Okay, they won't all be demands. Some of their calls will probably be filled with "I love you's" and "You're the best parent ever." Okay, stop laughing. Seriously, there are many reasons to come to RadioShack to get your kids a new wireless phone. Here are just a few.....

Behold, the clash of civilizations.

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