Passion in Teaching

   Passion is one of many characteristics that make a teacher truly great.  Teachers are charge with the job of educating children to become good citizens and important parts of society.  Teachers need to feel that their not hired for a job, but rather called to a profession.  Without dedication and passion, a teacher will only be working for the wrong reasons.
   I am a music education major here at Luther College and I was never one who got really excited about mathematics and science.  In high school chemistry though, my teacher was a very dedicated person who showed a passion for education.  He used all the resources he could to show us how redox equations and the periodic table applied to our daily lives.  He made chemistry applicable to each of his students lives whether is was your toothpaste of your microwave oven.  In college I even decided to venture outside the realm of music courses and take a chemistry class.  My college chemistry professor really enjoyed the subject he taught and, like my high school teacher, made sure the information we learned applied to our daily lives whether it was meat tenderization or avalanche control.  Because of these classes, I became more knowledgeable about a field I was previously uninterested in.
   In college here, I did have one negative experience with a teacher in an introductory class.  For an assignment we needed to bring in several quotes concerning music education.  One of the quotes I brought dealt with music and its healing capabilities.  While I do not remember the quote, I do remember my professor's response to it.  He basically said that the ideas behind the quote were no good and it did not matter.  Little did he know that I am very interested in music therapy and its application to special education programs in schools.  And I have done research in to the field already so it does exist.  I fisrt saw a Nova episode called Musical Minds which introduced me to this field of research for the first time.  I then read a book by Oliver Sacks, a neurologist, called Musicophilia which talks about his own experiences with music healing powers.  My interest grew which led me to the Beth Abraham Institute for Music and Neurological research.  Research done in the medical field has shown that music's application in the hospital has profound effects on patients' conditions improving conditions such as speech and motor impediments, autism, Tourette's Syndrome, Parkinson's, stroke, and memory deficits.  Research about the brain has also revealed that music is one thing that allows the brain to use both sides and much of its capacity which is great for developing brains.  I believe strongly that this information from the medical and music therapy field can be applied to education for all students.  If I had not read about the positive effects this use of music can have, my professor's comments could easily have deterred me from continued research and further reading in this area. 

Here are some links if you would like to learn more:

Beth Abraham Institute for Music and Neurological Research
     http://www.bethabe.org/music_institute55.html

Musicophilia by Oliver Sacks
     http://musicophilia.com/

Nova Musical Minds
     http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/musicminds/