Teaching Passion

Chabot College is developing a class where incoming students discuss their passion and future. The class also plans to talk about and critique the education system. One of the people that is developing the course, who happens to be my English professor, asked my class if a class that is geared to talk about their futures relates to critiquing the education system. I believe that critiquing education and a student's future are completely related. The reason for this is that students know first hand the problems students encounter and they may have some great solutions. In class, another student pointed out that being forced into critiquing education, something that they probably won't care about, is not really fair. I do agree with that, the class could scare people away, but I think if is approached in the right way the class could really get through to people. A few posts ago I did a post about a student from Texas named Jeff Bliss, he stood up to a lazy teacher. I believe that the passion class could allow students to speak up about or talk about lazy teachers. Since most people probably never talk about the issues in education, giving them an outlet seems to be a good idea.

In the Passion video, the students were talking about the importance of interacting with other students. Being able to talk with other students and seeing their point of view can broaden your mind. I would say that discussing education in this class will help get some students more interested in what is happening in the school system. I think there will still be teachers stuck in there ways, but I think the class should be taken by people considering teaching as a career. Or at least, invite teachers to sit in and join the discussion.

The next question our teacher asked us was if looking at ourselves would relate to the passion class. The idea of doing this is that in order to look toward your future, we need to accept or understand our past. An example given was if you came to College believing that you want to be a nurse, but when you reanalyze their past could understand why they made that decision. Maybe their parents wanted them to be a nurse, could be cultural, and maybe it was just always expected to do that. There are countless possibilities  but understanding your past could help someone decide on their future. 

Considering that Chabot has a pretty high drop out rate, it might be a good idea to have them think about these things. It could prevent them from walking down the wrong path. In the video with Jeff Bliss, we see most of the students sitting around not saying anything. This is not their fault, I think students believe that they can not speak out. If there is a class that allows students to speak their mind I think that it is the beginning of something great.

We did start talking about different cultures and to be sensitive to that. We started talking about how some cultures select your career path for you. It shows us that these are very deep questions that may not have a definitive answer. It is pretty complicated, you might be passionate about doing one thing, but your parents or culture are telling you to do something different. The class could make students either make some tough decisions or to do nothing. You can not have someone change who they are, but I think having their opinion about it would make the discussion even more interesting.