With so much of the focus being on teacher wellbing and stress, isn’t it time we looked at wellbeing and passion?
Teachers who are passionate about teaching and learning. They love their work and love what they do. You can see it in everything they do. They live, breathe and dream teaching, they push themselves and they see themselves as life-long learners, intensely curious and driven by a desire to teach and help others.
They have a genuine and authentic interest in their subject(s) and their pupils. It is a personal investment and sometimes ferocious and maverick.
They see teaching as their calling and they find a real purpose in being a pedagogue. They are driven, motivated and work hard to promote teaching in positive ways. Their passion fuels their efforts to be better teachers and helps them push through setbacks, frustrations and obstacles. They refuse to be victims and they never give up.
Robert L. Fried (2001) in “The Passionate Teacher” says,
A passionate teacher is to be someone in love with a field of knowledge, deeply stirred by issues and ideas that challenge our world, drawn to the dilemmas and potentials of the young people who come into class each day – or captivated by all of these. A passionate teacher is a teacher who breaks out of the isolation of a classroom, who refuses to submit to apathy or cynicism.
Their work challenges them and pushes their abilities to their limits but it excites them too.
Teachers with passion are enthusiastic and strive to make a difference and make children champions. They have a passion for achievement, care, collaboration, commitment, trust, inclusivity and the profession.
The thing is with passionate teachers, they do better. Professor John Hattie found this noting that teachers who are passionate about making a difference are more likely to make a difference – it is also one of the core components of being seen as a credible teacher.
Passion is everything. A teacher without energy, excitement and drive is not a teacher any pupil wants to have. Passionate teachers are those who make the greatest changes in pupils’ lives.
Children know who the best teachers are – they are the ones who entered the profession in order to make a difference not moan about it.
Many teachers enter the teaching profession with excitement for the job but do not always sustain it because of huge system pressures. Those that do really stand out.