Meme: Passion Quilt

The lovely and creative teacher, Gail Desler of blogwalker, has tagged me for a meme. Now I’m not much on these, but she is so great that I’d hate to disappoint her. So here goes.

First, the rules:

• Think about what you are passionate about teaching your students.
• Post a picture from a source like FlickrCC or Flickr Creative Commons or make/take your own that captures what YOU are most passionate about for kids to learn about…and give your picture a short title.
• Title your blog post “Meme: Passion Quilt” and link back to this blog entry.
• Include links to 5 folks in your professional learning network or whom you follow on Twitter/Pownce

I’m passionate about teaching my students to think, care, and do deeply and joyfully. I want them to see that grappling with complex stuff (be it an historical topic or an old book), say mucking about with an-at-first-unfathomable-primary-source, can be incredibly enlightening and fun too. I want them to appreciate diving into a topic and attacking it with rigor and gusto, all the while being creative and having fun with it too.

As for the picture, that is hard. How do you find one that shows kids excited with deep learning? Hm…how about this one?

Artifacts for our Arrival Box

It is my class showing all the wonderful artifacts they made for our Arrival Box — which we gave to author Shaun Tan when he visited us. Reading, discussing, creating artifacts, and more — our time with The Arrival epitomized what I want my classroom to be.

As for the last item on the rule list…I know all of the following are passionate educators.

Frankie and Mary Lee at A Year of Reading

Roxanne at Fairrosa’s Reading Journal

Tricia at the Miss Rumphius Effect

Becky at Farm School