Passion: PASS It ON

* The title of this post, Pass it On, comes from one of the We Connect submissions by a student named Hannah Hardy.*

My experience with passion has shown me that passion is often consuming as in your thoughts running wild with ideas keeping you up in the wee hours. It’s lying in bed with your mind planning, organizing, contemplating, reevaluating till you have to get up and produce. Passion is action because you have to release the insurmountable creativity and energy boiling within you. It’s often an unedited you with your thoughts on paper napkins, sketches in journals, or audio recordings of deep thoughts.
Passion is infectious. It spreads. When I feel uninspired I just have to listen to a song, watch a TED Talk, read a Seth Godin book, or talk with my Passionate Learning Network (PLN), and my thoughts are set back into motion. Here’s one of my favorite passionate speakers who has inspired me and over 13 million others with his message!

Passion Must be Shared

What I’m sharing isn’t new. You know what passion is because you have your own experience with passion or have been inspired by a person’s passion. What you may not realize, though, is that passion must be shared in order for you to really experience passion’s potential. Passion has the ability to change minds and inspire action. Only when your passion impacts another human being do you feel its intensity. Gather a group of passionate individuals and you create movements, make history, change lives, transform the world, and transform yourself.

Education and Passion

In education we need a gathering of educators, parents, students, and community leaders passionate about learning as an antidote to the boredom, mistrust, stress, and blame raging through education systems worldwide. Daily schools have the opportunity to spark a passion for learning but often desensitize children.
We need passionate educators to begin passing the passion on. Our passion must become viral. In order to do this we must gather and spread the message and impact others like Nick Vujicic does in the video above. Imagine if all our students are impacted by our passion daily. Imagine if all the children that entered school found their passion and ran with these passions like Ana, the student blogger, is doing.

What’s Your Movement and Message?

I think social networks and online educator communities with passionate individuals are part of the solution. I believe if all educational stakeholders are surrounded by the passionate individuals in our online communities, they will feel inspired. We need schools where inspired educators help students find their passions and explore these passions even if it is passion for art, music, a sport, or subject. Monika Hardy, a dear friend has created the Innovation Lab at her school that does just that and is revolutionizing the way schools can help students learn about what they are passionate about.
Therefore, in March 2010 I asked fellow passionate friends to help me create the We Connect creative commons video and wiki. You’ll notice Monika in this too! Over 50 parents, teachers, administrators, and kids from over 12 countries participated in providing short video messages of why they connect online. All I did was combine the submissions and add the background music. Various concoctions of this video have been presented to audiences worldwide in order to inspire educators to participate in online communities.