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The Passionate Learner: How Teachers and Parents Can Help Children Reclaim the Joy of Discovery
Following up on the success of the The Passionate A Practical Guide, Robert Fried's The Passionate Learner is an inspirational and practical guide to reclaiming students' passionate engagement in learning.
All preschool children are passionate, curious learners. Somewhere along the way—in school—many, many kids become alienated from the joy of learning. Academically successful and frustrated students alike become reluctant or resistant or merely obedient. How could school be different so that this didn't happen?
Fried starts with vivid portraits of young children as passionate learners, invoking the voices and hopes of parents and teachers. He shows us how a "chasm" develops between the initial promise of every child and the reality of life in school. Then, step by step, he shows how teachers—and parents as allies—can encourage and develop passionate learning in all kids.
Filled with stories from classrooms, the voices of teachers, and practical suggestions, Fried advocates a vision of curriculum as a web of relationships and a revised understanding of "excellence" that supports passionate learning. Fried identifies with teachers' frustration, but then patiently and enthusiastically leads them in a new direction. Topics making children passionate readers who pick up books on their own; teaching children to be confident orators in class; holding on to passionate teaching and learning in an era of standardization. Inspirational, accessible, and filled with detailed storytelling, The Passionate Learner will inspire and instruct teachers and parents of children at all grade levels.
All preschool children are passionate, curious learners. Somewhere along the way—in school—many, many kids become alienated from the joy of learning. Academically successful and frustrated students alike become reluctant or resistant or merely obedient. How could school be different so that this didn't happen?
Fried starts with vivid portraits of young children as passionate learners, invoking the voices and hopes of parents and teachers. He shows us how a "chasm" develops between the initial promise of every child and the reality of life in school. Then, step by step, he shows how teachers—and parents as allies—can encourage and develop passionate learning in all kids.
Filled with stories from classrooms, the voices of teachers, and practical suggestions, Fried advocates a vision of curriculum as a web of relationships and a revised understanding of "excellence" that supports passionate learning. Fried identifies with teachers' frustration, but then patiently and enthusiastically leads them in a new direction. Topics making children passionate readers who pick up books on their own; teaching children to be confident orators in class; holding on to passionate teaching and learning in an era of standardization. Inspirational, accessible, and filled with detailed storytelling, The Passionate Learner will inspire and instruct teachers and parents of children at all grade levels.
297 pages, Hardcover
First published October 13, 2001
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May 24, 2020"These are questions that, in the hurly burly of our daily tasks in school, we rarely ask ourselves"
"Practicing how to write the letter g is potentially no more or less boring than practicing how to kick a soccer ball or play a chord on a guitar."
"Parents can make a point of doing the homework assignments alongside their child(not doing it for her), and thus the can share the experience of coping with frustration or finding amusing ways to tackle a boring assignment."
"I am appalled by how rarely parents and students are invited into the conversation about what teachers should teach and what kids need to learn."
"Song by myself" de Walt Whitman si eleva deprimata careia poezia ii poate aduce un A.
"March comes in like a lion and goes out like a lamb".
"Have the legislature pass a law, or get corporate area and business support, to give every parent one or two days a year, as paid leave, to spend in their child's school seeing what and how their child is learning."
"Schools should create more multigrade classrooms, that place students at two grade levels in the same classroom."
Pornind de la poemul "Tyger" de William Blake, o eleva a scris poezia:
"Horse, horse, whhy do you have to work for humans?
Because my cousin, The Unicorn, stole my wings.
Why do you jump this high?
Because I try to be free, by jumping.
Why can't you fly?
Because as I told you, my cousin stole my wings - DUH!"
"Classrooms should be places where children should learn to talk(not to just sit quietly and listen)."
Un copil de 4-5 saptamani face sunetele lui si bunica lui il asculta. "You have to let him know that he's a juman being, and that when he says something, there's somebody listening. That's how he feels validated and he knows that his voice is significant."
brown nosing
"Since shy children have shy parents, overcoming shyness can be something that child and parent agree to work on together."
"So, if we want more kids to "talk" in class, and to do so thoughtfully, and be listened to with respect by peers, we need to treat the like people who have ideas worth sharing, people whose interpretation of ideas, based on their life situations, are intersting to us."
John Dewey quote: <>
"It is a too-often-used analogy to say that we pay millions of dollars a year to a baseball player who, as a batter, fails to do what he's supposed to do seven out of ten times."
chutzpah
"Practicing how to write the letter g is potentially no more or less boring than practicing how to kick a soccer ball or play a chord on a guitar."
"Parents can make a point of doing the homework assignments alongside their child(not doing it for her), and thus the can share the experience of coping with frustration or finding amusing ways to tackle a boring assignment."
"I am appalled by how rarely parents and students are invited into the conversation about what teachers should teach and what kids need to learn."
"Song by myself" de Walt Whitman si eleva deprimata careia poezia ii poate aduce un A.
"March comes in like a lion and goes out like a lamb".
"Have the legislature pass a law, or get corporate area and business support, to give every parent one or two days a year, as paid leave, to spend in their child's school seeing what and how their child is learning."
"Schools should create more multigrade classrooms, that place students at two grade levels in the same classroom."
Pornind de la poemul "Tyger" de William Blake, o eleva a scris poezia:
"Horse, horse, whhy do you have to work for humans?
Because my cousin, The Unicorn, stole my wings.
Why do you jump this high?
Because I try to be free, by jumping.
Why can't you fly?
Because as I told you, my cousin stole my wings - DUH!"
"Classrooms should be places where children should learn to talk(not to just sit quietly and listen)."
Un copil de 4-5 saptamani face sunetele lui si bunica lui il asculta. "You have to let him know that he's a juman being, and that when he says something, there's somebody listening. That's how he feels validated and he knows that his voice is significant."
brown nosing
"Since shy children have shy parents, overcoming shyness can be something that child and parent agree to work on together."
"So, if we want more kids to "talk" in class, and to do so thoughtfully, and be listened to with respect by peers, we need to treat the like people who have ideas worth sharing, people whose interpretation of ideas, based on their life situations, are intersting to us."
John Dewey quote: <>
"It is a too-often-used analogy to say that we pay millions of dollars a year to a baseball player who, as a batter, fails to do what he's supposed to do seven out of ten times."
chutzpah
September 13, 2017
How can you not like someone who writes, "In the best of circumstances, teacher, parent, and student will share the vision of the child as a self-initiating seeker of truth and power through knowledge and skills development. The teacher will, in most cases, take the lead in creating such a vision, but the student and parent must understand and interpret 'excellence' in ways that make sense to them." "Quality learning requires the parent to be both patient and supportive, holding in check the voices that want to push the child toward short-term, less-authentic rewards, and keeping in one's mind a vision of the child as a lifelong learner." "Quality learning has a lot to do with taking what's given--an assignment from the teacher--and figuring out how to make it correspond to the child's idea of a quality experience, how to find an angle on the assignment that the child can be enthusiastic about (or at least help the child not feel insulted or overwhelmed by the assignment." (all on page 229)
Some of Dr. Fried's most interesting ideas come from the university classes he teaches in children's literature and in curriculum. One workshop exercise he does with teachers is have them draw a pie graph of the major concepts or skills they want students to take away from a particular course--particular big ideas, ways that they relate material to their own lives, and so on. Then he also has them graph their grading scheme for a course--15% for term tests, 10% for homework and so on. Their conceptual goals for the course often conflict with the way the students are being marked; the ideas they say are important get less weight than things like attendance and homework. Homeschoolers may not be grading work, but it's still something to think about, maybe in terms of time spent instead of grades given. If we say that a goal in history is to see how God deals with nations and individuals, do we actually spend much time discussing that, or is it all about memorizing dates on a timeline?
What happens in the workshop, then, is that they take the two pie charts, and try to rewrite the grading-scheme chart to better reflect the important ideas of the course. Maybe there will be a larger, self-designed project on a major person or event in a period of history, something that allows the student to ask and answer his own questions. (Like a science fair project.) Maybe there will be no quizzes, but there will be one short-answer test just to make sure they haven't missed the basics. This is something that we can apply in homeschools, no matter what curriculum we're using: we definitely have the freedom to structure or restructure a course to focus on what's most important. And then--I found this interesting--the teachers are challenged to take the major concepts they used for the first pie graph, and make them super-clear and intelligible, something that they could hand to the students (or the parents) to explain what they're supposed to be learning, and why they're learning it.
Because if you're the teacher and you don't know that yourself, you're going to be stuck with "open your books and read the next chapter," and that's not very passionate.
Some of Dr. Fried's most interesting ideas come from the university classes he teaches in children's literature and in curriculum. One workshop exercise he does with teachers is have them draw a pie graph of the major concepts or skills they want students to take away from a particular course--particular big ideas, ways that they relate material to their own lives, and so on. Then he also has them graph their grading scheme for a course--15% for term tests, 10% for homework and so on. Their conceptual goals for the course often conflict with the way the students are being marked; the ideas they say are important get less weight than things like attendance and homework. Homeschoolers may not be grading work, but it's still something to think about, maybe in terms of time spent instead of grades given. If we say that a goal in history is to see how God deals with nations and individuals, do we actually spend much time discussing that, or is it all about memorizing dates on a timeline?
What happens in the workshop, then, is that they take the two pie charts, and try to rewrite the grading-scheme chart to better reflect the important ideas of the course. Maybe there will be a larger, self-designed project on a major person or event in a period of history, something that allows the student to ask and answer his own questions. (Like a science fair project.) Maybe there will be no quizzes, but there will be one short-answer test just to make sure they haven't missed the basics. This is something that we can apply in homeschools, no matter what curriculum we're using: we definitely have the freedom to structure or restructure a course to focus on what's most important. And then--I found this interesting--the teachers are challenged to take the major concepts they used for the first pie graph, and make them super-clear and intelligible, something that they could hand to the students (or the parents) to explain what they're supposed to be learning, and why they're learning it.
Because if you're the teacher and you don't know that yourself, you're going to be stuck with "open your books and read the next chapter," and that's not very passionate.
July 12, 2009
Children are born naturally curious, passionate learners. When their learning at home doesn't match their learning in school, problems arise. This book offers ideas and advice for parents and teachers who want to keep kids learning for the joys of learning.
When we lower our bars and our expectations and/or start teaching to the tests and/or become overconcerned with grades, we do both ALL kids a disservice, the kids doing poorly by our standards, the "bad" students, and even the "good" students who learn to get the grade by figuring out what the teacher wants and perhaps putting independent thinking on a back-burner in the meantime.
Fried focuses on early education, reading/writing, and the era of standardized tests.
See also, Eleanor Duckworth's The Having of Wonderful Ideas and Donald Grave's Write From the Start.
When we lower our bars and our expectations and/or start teaching to the tests and/or become overconcerned with grades, we do both ALL kids a disservice, the kids doing poorly by our standards, the "bad" students, and even the "good" students who learn to get the grade by figuring out what the teacher wants and perhaps putting independent thinking on a back-burner in the meantime.
Fried focuses on early education, reading/writing, and the era of standardized tests.
See also, Eleanor Duckworth's The Having of Wonderful Ideas and Donald Grave's Write From the Start.
April 14, 2015
I'm disappointed with this book. It offers little more than a philosophy and is not very practical. Obviously we all want students to stay creative and motivated and want to learn beyond the classroom. However, unless a school district wholeheartedly embraces this as their driving philosophy teachers can't do as much as this author recommends. Teachers will continue to make learning as engaging, fun, and creative as they can but allowing students interests to guide them is way too hard for elementary school. I hoped this book would apply to all grades but if the ideas are going to work anywhere, it isn't going to be in elementary school. That is, unless we are talking about Montessori schools which give the kids that kind of freedom.
November 24, 2018
I love that Fried suggests the onus of learning is a three way street: parent, student, teacher. Often it falls on the shoulders of teachers. He also emphasizes the learning that takes place outside of the school walls.
October 20, 2014
Really inspiring. Author includes fantastic ideas for the classroom that fit his vision of what a classroom should be and look like.
October 31, 2018
A deep analysis and proactive approach to classrooms today, even almost 2 decades after first publication. Take time to read this book if you have anything to do with children or young adults!
February 6, 2020
Overall I liked it. It has inspiring stories and ideas about learning. Other times he has lists that seem simplistic or prescriptive.
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews