18 March 2008 - 21:48Once Upon a School

I find passion absolutely fascinating.

Dave Eggers: Once Upon a School

Official Spiel: Accepting his 2008 TED Prize, author Dave Eggers asks the TED community to personally, creatively engage with local public schools. With spellbinding eagerness, he talks about how his 826 Valencia tutoring center inspired others around the world to open their own volunteer-driven, wildly creative writing labs. But you don’t need to go that far, he reminds us — it’s as simple as asking a teacher “How can I help?” He asks that we share our own volunteering stories at his new website, Once Upon a School.

My Spiel:

I’ve read Dave’s book A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, and what really struck me was that a) it was well written, b) I didn’t like it but c) that it showed true passion. I have nothing but admiration for someone who cares that much about something, anything.

The more talks I listen to and books I read by educators the more I am struck by the fact that the successes had passion delivered by the teachers into the students. It almost doesn’t matter what you teach as long as you teach it like you care. From football coaches who build discipline and character to dance instructors who inspire a sense of manners to Shakespeare for inner city kids the common element is that the teachers who make a difference have a passion for their subject.

The trick of education, then, is to combine students with teachers of passion until some common interest between teacher and student is found. For me it was books, and my teachers were authors. Easy enough, all they had to do was introduce me to the library. For many of my engineering peers there was one or two science teachers along the way that set the spark. This is why I think TED is such a good educational tool- somewhere among those many lecturers there is a speaker with your student’s passion coursing through their veins, waiting to be heard.

I am envious, deeply envious, of the enthusiasm that these speakers can inspire in others.