Every one of your students has a main interest, or passion, if you will. These passions are extremely diverse and include everything (and anything) from nature, to sports, to reading, to music, to vehicles, to history, to medicine, to space exploration, to a wide variety of other, often unexpected areas. In some cases a student's passion may be still hidden from his or her own self-knowledge. And many students have more than one.Knowing what those individual passion are, not just on the surface but in some depth and detail, is extremely important for partnering teachers. The reason is that students' passion are the routes and filters through which partnering teachers create individualized learning, learning that will stick in students' minds, be valuable in their lives, and make them want more.Today there is a new buzzword making the rounds: passion-based learning.
Partnering tipOn the first day of class, when you introduce yourself to your class and ask each student his or her name, also ask, individually, what each student is interestes in and/or passionate about. Write this down, and take it seriously. It will enable you to design ways to reach each of these students through his or her passion and to cluster your students, at certain times, by their common interests.You can encourage those students who are not able to identify a passion to try out the different cluster as they seek their own interests.
"Teaching digital natives", Marc Prensky