Coffeechug reads The Passionate Teacher by Robert Fried

aarmau@gmail.comNovember 8, 2013Book Reviews
Title: The Passionate Teacher
Author: Robert Fried

It would only make sense that I read any book that deals with passion and education being that this has been a major platform of mine this year.

Doing some research into the merits of passion and how far you pursue this mindset lead to this author Robert Fried.

I had never heard of him or any of his work. I was lucky enough to find a copy of this book at one of the libraries here in the state of Iowa. The book is 12 years old, but was such a breath of fresh air to my mind.

This book brought a lot of new ideas to my mind and challenged some of the things that I was developing on my own.

I found this book to be quite important to my reading and development as an educator. What I liked best about this book is that he offered practical ideas, units, and forms to use to help transform our thoughts and teaching.

As I work to develop my own book on education I realized that I must do the same. If I am going to challenge a system, I must come up with how I would actually go about making the change.

I took about a half of a legal notepad full of notes. I would be willing to share my thoughts and ideas. If interested let me know and I will send the link to my Evernote.

At the end of the day, there has to be a balance between the passion of the teacher and the interest of the students. If your passion is in education, then the role of student voice must play a part.

This book drove home many new ideas for me, but more importantly it reinforced some key concepts that I have been focused on personally.

To have passion grants us a way of honoring our life’s work. We must show our students what it means to be passionate learners.
We are role models for what we are still learning, not what we already know. This is a monster mind shift for many educators.
Teachers wear success so hesitantly. We need to broadcast and share. Students need us to help them discover the right questions.
Change must be quality and not just a trend.
Teachers need to go for it. It is time to go with our hearts and gut instinct and make it happen.
How are you going to be stay out of trouble? This should be the question for teachers. We should be experimenting more and testing out new ideas and ways of teaching. If we feel safe, then we are not really pushing ourselves as learners and teachers.
Challenge yourself as a learner so you stay passionate
In closing this was a great read. One that I am so happy I found. Rarely do I go back and read books more than a few years old, but this one exception made me realize that perhaps I should change this reading rule. If you are looking for some ideas about changing your ways and more insight on passion driven teaching, then this one must be on your nightstand.

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