Schooling and education take up a significant part of our lives, especially the years that we are continuing to develop as people in many aspects. You may start attending pre-school or pre-k between the ages of three and five, and that is just the start of being stuck in school until you are at least 18 years old. These 13 years of development and learning can have a genuine impact on your interests and personality, making general education a very important time during our lives. There are significant differences between public education, private education, homeschooling and the many other methods of teaching and learning that we see in our world today. One thing that we don’t often think about during this time of development is how much we are truly finding ourselves. As corny as it sounds, the people you surround yourself with and the things that interest you early in your life will most likely always have an impact on your life in some way. Since education plays such a huge role in the development of our personality and exploring potential interests, how are educators using the curriculum we learn to spark our interests in future goals and careers? How much is the education system really taking our futures into consideration?

An article by Psychology Today better explains how finding passions comes as a result of self-directed education. The article explains how the study had been done on graduates from a school in Massachusetts where students as young as four years old are able to use their school day to pursue their own interests. The study was also done on a group of students who were considered homeschooled but did not legally have to follow a specific or general educational curriculum. A high percentage of the young adults who participated in the study pursued careers associated with interests that they had developed as young children. Many of the examples in this article were similar, as the students had found their own interest at some point during their childhood and decided to pursue it as a career. Although this is a special case where the study was done on student’s who attended a regular school, how much would results really change if the experimental groups were different?

The article by Psychology Today also explains how schools prevent students from finding a true passion that can lead to a potential career or genuine interest. Some of their reasonings for how schools thwart passions from their students include how everyone is required to do the same thing at the same time, how students are threatened with embarrassment which can generate fear, being taught that there is one right answer or correct way to do what you are supposed to do, and teaching students that learning is work and that playing is a break from learning. The strict structure and schedule that most schools tend to run on is tiring and uninteresting for the kids, considering the fact that they’re all stuck in the same routine for long periods of time with the same people. These familiar surroundings and inability to choose to learn about their own interests leads to students lacking self expression. Students are not offered alternatives to what they may not particularly be interested in, and speaking from experience this can cause for students to feel less motivated to get their school work done and think about furthering their education.

There are a variety of ways that schools can adjust to help students find their passion. A blog called TeachThought came out with an article that gave 25 ways to incorporate passion-based learning into a classroom. Although it seems like this article was aimed towards early childhood education, I do think that the information in it can be applied to older students and still be just as affective. A few of these ways to promote passion while in an educational setting include to have teachers share their own passions with their students, let students share their passions in their classroom, help students connect with other who have similar interests and passions, and allow them to understand that changing their passion is normal and okay. I actually found this article very interesting while reading through it and I thought about what I was passionate about when I was a younger student.

As I thought about it, I realized that I didn’t have much of a passion when I was younger that had anything to do with my education. At a very young age, I became interested in dance and cheerleading which I continued for a significant portion of my life and it was one thing that I considered myself to be fairly passionate about. When I was in elementary and middle school, I don’t remember any of my teachers encouraging me to find a passion that may one day be useful in my life. This only began when I was in high school and my school began requiring us to complete bi-monthly career building surveys to help put us on a path for when we graduate high school. However, this wasn’t a resource that necessarily helped me when it came to finding a passion for what I would potentially want to pursue as a career.

I believe that there are many ways that passion-based learning can be incorporated into a classroom with students of any age. Having some sort of activity that would be interesting or enjoyable to the students while promoting their passions is a great way to get students on the right track of pursing a career that they are truly passionate about as adults. It probably sounds much easier than it actually is to incorporate passion based learning into a lesson, but starting with simple acts like introducing a teachers own passions into their classroom which can also be inspiring and motivating to students, allowing for students and teachers to be able to form closer relationships. Having students also understand that it is okay for them to change their passions and explore their interests while supporting them through the process is a way to form teacher-student trust.