Passionate teachers. Inspired children!

When passion is the subject of conversation our minds tend to navigate us to people that have inspired us in our life: our parents, our teachers, some coach in our youth, a politician or a boss in our place of employment. Who comes to your mind? Please take time to think on this and unpack the influence this person/s has had on who you are today.

The concept of passion is explained in many ways but if you do some research you will find definitions often include attributes such as love, enthusiasm, motivation, energy and dedication.

Personally, I will always be grateful to my high school history teacher who ignited my lessons with her demonstration of the attributes aforementioned as well as her positive attitude, her belief and her sheer enjoyment of discovering about our world; past, present and future. As a student, I not only learned the facts and the skills to research and interpret evidence but I was able to engage in the wonder of inquiry and the power of debate. Every moment of each lesson counted!

My sole desire, as the head of the primary division at SISQ, is that all the children will experience the wonder of learning through passionate teaching that will encourage them to be life-long learners and to discover their own paths of passion.

Realistically, our children will forget lessons that were taught and information that was presented to them but they will never forget how their teachers made them feel in the classroom and what they were able to discover for themselves. To this end, our programmes are centered around commitment and caring.

When teachers plan for learning they are committed to thinking creatively as to how to captivate the interest of the children and collaborative discussions fine-tune how “what the students need to know” is made accessible to each of them despite the different ways that children learn. Activities are planned to provide opportunities for children to question, explore, to connect learning from one experience to the next, to work collaboratively and reflect.

The school community is built on a culture of care and as professionals we care about what happens in our school. Each minute, from the morning meet and greet to the goodbye at the end of the after-school activity, is carefully thought through as each one impacts the students and the attitudes they will go home with. This we care about as these attitudes will shape the adult mind

Passion does make a difference in the classroom and passionate teaching enables inspired learning.

Susan Anderson, Head of Primary School