Content and Professional passion are intricately woven together for educators. Content passion embraces the topics or areas you LOVE to teach. Everyone has that one thing that is your absolute favorite. It may be a topic, subject or even just a particular lesson. Professional passion is the thing within your profession but not specific to your subject matter that drives you.
Discussion Question #1-
What are your content and professional passions?
Discussion Question #2-
Personal passion is that which is completely outside of your profession that you are passionate about. What is you personal passion?
Immersion:
"A lack of immersion in the present send a clear message that this moment is somehow less important and
not significant enough to be worth undivided attention." Burgess p 14
Being a teacher means being more that just being focused on your students. An effective teacher is immersed in her/her students' learning; this is especially important when delivering the first lesson on a new concept. Burgess gives the illustration in the book by using a life guard analogy. FOCUS vs IMMERSION (p 14-15)
"I'm suggesting that when delivering first instruction, especially to struggling learners, you need to leave the comfort of the lounge chair or lifeguard tower and jump into the water with your students. " (Burgess p 15)
Discussion Question #3-
What are 2 things you can do in your classroom to truly be immersed- or to switch from focus to immersion?
Rapport:
This chapter is near and dear to my heart. I am a firm believer in the power of rapport! Building rapport/relationships is a critical element of great teaching and in life! When you know someone cares about you or is interested in you as a unique person, you are certainly more connected.
The beginning of this chapter hits the topic that can make or break educators from year to year: CLASSROOM MANAGEMENT. We all deal with issues and concerns regardless of how long we have been teaching. Consider these quotes:
"We don't want to develop techniques to win behavior management battles, w e ant to develop techniques that allow us to avoid battles altogether." (Burgess p.19)
"Misbehavior usually indicates boredom, overwhelm, or lack of connection to the material begin covered" (Burgess p. 20)
Burgess uses this chapter to walk us through his first 3 days of school. This is a highly entertaining read, and if you haven't read this chapter yet, well, what are you waiting for? I was also reassured by so many practices that happen here at Southwest. (Again, some will work for you and some will not.) There are many great statemenst Burgess makes that are very thought provoking! Here are a few of my favorites:
"I will pull out all the stops to convince them (the students) it doesn't matter if they have failed before because my class is absolutely and completely different." ( Burgess p.31)
"I explain how the brain works and how a positive learning environment is critical for higher-order thinking to take place."
(Burgess p.31)
"I'm selling education... a life-altering product that can transform the human spirit and literally change the world one student at a time." (Burgess p.32)
DISCUSSION QUESTION #4:
How can we create an environment in our classes that develops rapport?