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Darling-Hammond
2010
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Activities & Lessons
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Purpose-Finding, Community, & Experiential Learning
Students
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30 minutes.
Human Restoration Project, Creative Commons-BY-SA.
March 2020
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In this lesson, students discuss the factors that can lead to a loss of passion and explore the importance of discovering their passions, reflecting on their childhood inspirations and excitements, and writing down as many things that inspired or excited them as possible.
The purpose of this lesson is to explore the factors that can lead to a loss of passion, including limited definitions of success, self-doubt, societal norms, and lack of support, and to encourage students to rediscover their passions and explore their identities.
Grading and Testing: Many schools only test one type of intelligence: logical reasoning. Overtime, this makes you believe that this is all that matters.
Defining “Success”: We tend to define “successful” people by massive amounts of money or fame, and rarely how personally fulfilled they are.
Friends and Family: The people closest to you may doubt that your aspirations are realistic. They may have your best interests in mind, but are scared of any potential risks.
Being Against the Norm: Our culture tends to believe someone “sticking to their guns” is unrealistic or has “their head in the clouds”...that is, until they “make it”.
Self-Doubt: It’s completely normal to be afraid of failure. In many ways, school has conditioned that failing is “bad.” That couldn’t be further from the truth. Failure is learning.
A Lack of Energy: Consistently doing things you don’t enjoy will be draining. Many students who don’t enjoy school, have many pressures in their lives, or face insecurities may feel drained all the time.
Look at the six elements listed as a potential factor into the loss of passion. Can you think of any experiences similar to this in your life or someone else’s? If not, can you hypothetically reason why one of these could be a problem? Write your thoughts below.
Passion is something that gives you an identity - the action that you love most. Often-times, children explore these ideas in elementary school: books about dinosaurs, telescopes, drawing kits, and more enchant and mystify them. Sadly, this tends to fade over time. As you grow older, you begin to conform to what everyone else believes you should do: obtain good grades, act “normal”, find something that is “realistic” to do.
However, this loss of passion is detrimental to the human soul; it makes you lack energy, dread working, and overall - unhappy. Therefore, we should discover what passions exist within you.
Imagine your life when you were younger. Take time to really think about who you were (or perhaps, who you are now!) Write down something that inspired or excited you. You can list as many things as you’d like:
