Be Passionate about Life

I've been trying to boil down my wish list for education for 2014. It could be a really long list. It could include a more meaningful dialogue around Common Core. It could include a desire to focus on engagement of students above all else. It could include doing school different instead of just trying to do school better. It could include focusing on empathy as an elixir to bullying and violence in school. It could include making sure that school is life instead of school preparing kids for life, and it could even include better food in our cafeterias and more active kids at school. In the end, I only have one item on the list. It is a more passionate tribe of adults to surround our kids. We need more passion in education surrounding the right stuff. We need passion oozing out of our ears. We need passion for curriculum, and passion for instruction. We need our kids to see that we care so much that we refuse to let life get in the way of their futures. Passion in education has a wave of reasons to retreat, but let 2014 be the year when we scream from each of our spaces, amplified in power by our connected network, that the reasons that we entered this field on back as priorities. Be passionate about kids. Be passionate about learning. Be passionate about life. Be passionate about change.