Teaching Passion

Content
+Relationship
+Skill
+Method
+Passion
=Learning

I am a facilitator, trainer, coach, and teacher. Basically I teach people how to teach. My beginnings were in middle school education at the University of Northern Iowa, which is a foundation that has served me well. Through the years I have learned to sit down, talk less, and listen more. My formula for teaching began with the first two words, with skill, method and passion added later.

Passion is something often recognized by the sound of ones voice, the sparkle in a person’s eye an enthusiasm that oozes out of them, a fire in the belly (Nathan's line) or even a heated urgency. Passionate people are often associated with loud fast speaking, but not necessarily so. I also see passion in the quiet, heart felt wisdom, of the person who speaks only a few words, but behind those words you can sense a deep sincerity.

So as a teacher of teachers, I wonder, can passion be taught? For a while I saw passion as something that had to be caught, more than taught, the idea that if you expose learners to passionate people, it may rub off on them. In a discussion over email with one of my Augsburg students I discovered a line out of Dangerous Wonder by Mike Yaconelli. “Passion can’t be fabricated or manipulated. Passion springs from gratitude”

If this is true, then reaching passion can come from learning to be grateful. Maybe it is so. My passions are the things I love to do most, the beliefs I hold dear to my heart, experiences I would never give up, my fondest relationships, and the surprising moments of discovery. Most all of these can be summed up in recognizing that I am so grateful that I can do, believe, experience, relate and discover. What I am most grateful for becomes my passion.

Okay a confession… I like listening to talk radio. Not a lot, but enough to catch the entertainment value of loud angry white men getting paid to riel people enough to tune in and call in. (Just for fun I sometimes count accusatory pronouns such as, they, them, and those people. Seem to average about 5 per minute.) I admit they sound passionate, but an aggressive, angry kind of passion. Are they grateful? Assuming behind their rants they actually believe what they profess must come from a belief, experience, relationship, or discovery that feels threatening by all the theys, thems and those peoples. When something grateful is challenged, or attacked, people may respond with passionate angry.

So, grateful! Teach people to name what they are most grateful for and they will discover their passions. True, passion cannot be fabricated or manipulated. But I can invite people to become conscious of and name what they are grateful for.