Falling in Love with Learning

Do you remember the first time you saw that person who made your heart beat a little faster and your mouth get a little dry? For those who have experienced the beauty of falling in love, the experience is one that only a romantic comedy could come close to describing.

Those couples who are "in love" maintain that their thoughts are soley focused in one direction ... on that other person. To be drawn into such a deep relationship that can only be satisfied by additional time with your beloved: what a feeling!

There's no way I could make a jump from falling in love with another person to loving learning if it wasn't for something I heard recently.

A couple of weeks ago, I was listening to Jim Fey, one of the founders of the Love and Logic Institute, and he was talking about educators and students. He described one of the most important aspects of teaching: to make students fall in love with us. Meaning, if the students fall in love with what the teacher is teaching, then a deeper relationship may unfold. If that relationship develops, the students may want to keep coming back for more. If that happens, a llifelong passion for learning may begin to transpire. What a feeling!

So how do we create this lifelong passion? How do we get students to fall in love with learning? I've got two quick thoughts, but be careful about trying to implement these ideas. They just might work!

The first: Engage the student. Find out something about the student that you are not aware of. It doesn't have to be school related, just start the relationship. Let students know you are interested in knowing them as a person. Let them know you care. That's not a bad thing ... it's a good thing and one that will lead to the next idea.

The second idea: Get the student engaged in the learning. Any projects you have laying around the classroom that could use a student leader? Is there something groups of students could work on outside of the normal textbook curriculum? Any chance a few students could try and write their own curriculum based on the information you have taught? It doesn't really matter how well it turns out, the question is, can student engagement turn students on to learning?