What are you passionate about?

When I decided to pursue a career in education, I did so because I love working with kids, I love learning, and I thought I could help inspire kids to love learning. One of my major interests in education lies in this idea of learning - how do we learn? how do kids learn? how I can help kids learn? how can I help kids want to learn? Since starting this graduate program, I have learned so much, and not only about what I thought I was going to learn, but all of these new ideas and new questions. My passion for teaching and education has developed so much in the last 8 months. I still have a desire to learn about kid's brains, and how they learn, so I can understand how we can best teach them. I hope to further my own learning in this area through further coursework (another degree..?) in psychology or maybe even neuroscience. I'd like to make some new connections about the way we teach our kids and help transform our practices for the better. I, now having been in classrooms, have started to also think more about how we are preparing our students for the world that they are entering. Do our methods of teaching truly prepare students to be holistic thinkers, successful collaborators, problem solvers? I want to teach in a way that addresses the needs and skills specific to this new generation of students. I hope to be an advocate for student's needs and for positive and necessary changes in the way that we educate them.