Pursuing our Interests

I know it's been a long time since I posted anything here. I always have good intentions, and then the reality of each day seems to suck up all the time. Today, however, I read an amazing blog post and felt inspired. Sometimes that's all it takes for us to start on something: an inspiring moment. The blog post I read is titled: Dreams When We're Awake, and it is found on a blog I follow called Cool Cat Teacher Blog. Here is the link: http://bit.ly/i1blfC I found this post to be very inspirational. The writer is a teacher from Southern Georgia who thinks in a similar way to me, when it comes to the purpose of education. She writes about how getting her students to write about topics that they were passionate about started a ball rolling that lead to a conference for like minded teachers and students in Qatar. Very cool. But more so because right now, in my English classes we are working on this very thing. Each student is pursuing a topic that interests them so greatly they want to focus on it for a two month period of time. This project came about as a result of listening to speakers like Will Richardson and reading blogs from forward thinking educators. To me, English class should be about the teaching of how to communicate ideas. In doing so the students will read, write and create media content. These are skills upon which they can build as they move through the school system and eventually into the workforce. While there may be times when the whole class can benefit from reading the same thing, there are also times when students need to be empowered and take responsibility for their own learning. I look forward to sharing the results of these projects.