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The Importance of Passion in Education

           As the famous 19th Century German philosopher Friedrich Neitzsche once said, “Do not just live, live with passion.” I would like to change this quote to replace the word “live” with “teach.” After this adjustment, the above quote states nicely the topic of my article: “Do not just teach, teach with passion.”
When you think of the individuals in your life who have had the most influence, who comes to your mind? Think about them, stack them up. Tallest to shortest, oldest to youngest, whatever your fancy may be. They are the people who taught you something about life. How did they do that? What was it about them that made you grab a double glance, pull up a chair, ponder awhile? The person who first comes to my mind does not do so because she’s attractive or because she’s witty. She comes to my mind first because of the way she treats people. When she sees people, she sees them as human beings with loves and dreams and troubles. I look up to her and wish to emulate her because she lives her life with something incredible: passion. The way she treats the people around her is full of love for them. It is palpable, it is beautiful, it is a burst of strong Rexburg wind that flies through you. These are the people we seek to surround ourselves with and learn from.
According to Merriam-Webster Dictionary (2004), Passion means, “Love; also: an object of affection or enthusiasm.” To have passion is to have enthusiasm. Truly influential people are filled with it. There are multiple types of teachers: Bad, mediocre (barely adequate), average, and great. We need not concern ourselves with the first three in that limited list. We want to know about the really great ones: those teachers whose classes fill up in two hours, the teachers that students remember long after leaving their classroom at the end of the semester, those few teachers who truly shine. If we look inside those teachers, what will we see? Enthusiasm! To love what you teach is to teach it well. To teach well, you must first love what you are teaching.
To students, there is a line easily visible that separates the instructors who enjoy their subject and those who do not. The subject you teach is the most interesting, most useful subject in the entire world. This is the message that you should be projecting to your students. How? Your body language and the words you speak should be full of passion for that subject. As human beings, we are programmed to read body language. A study done by Albert Mehrabian concluded that over half the impression we get from someone comes through our body language; above a quarter is from the tone, speed, and inflection of our voice; and a less than ten percent is from what we are actually saying.
Enjoying the subject matter you are trying to share is vital to successful teaching. Helping a student enjoy the subject is a stepping stone to their success. In order to help anyone like something, you must first like it. Let us keep in mind then, that if we want someone to enjoy what we enjoy, if we want them to learn what we are teaching, we must first enjoy it ourselves and then share it with passion.

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