The second chapter of Nancy Fitchman Dana and Diane Yendol-Hoppey's book, "The Reflective Educator's Guide to Research: Learning to Teach and Teaching to Learn Through Practitioner Inquiry", they discuss ways for teachers to discover their "Wonderings". A wondering is when a twacher, or anyone really, makes the statement: I wonder ..., I think ..., or What if ... These questions open up the mind to a plethora of ideas and ways they could perform teacher inquiry and action research. The authors state that there are 8 passions that have arisen from previous research about this topic, mainly as a combination of Complexity of Teacher's Work in the Classroom and Felt Difficulties and Real World Dilemma's (depicted below).
The 8 Passions are:
Passion 1: Helping an Individual Child
Passion 2: Desire to Improve or Enrich Curriculum
Passion 3: Focus on Developing Content Knowledge
Passion 4: Desire to Improve or Experiment With Teaching Strategies and Teaching Techniques
Passion 5: Desire to Explore the Relationship Between Your Beliefs and Your Classroom Practice
Passion 6: The Intersection of Your Personal and Professional Identities
Passion 7: Advocating Social Justice
Passion 8: Focus on Understanding the Teaching and Learning Context
Passion 1: Helping an Individual Child
Passion 2: Desire to Improve or Enrich Curriculum
Passion 3: Focus on Developing Content Knowledge
Passion 4: Desire to Improve or Experiment With Teaching Strategies and Teaching Techniques
Passion 5: Desire to Explore the Relationship Between Your Beliefs and Your Classroom Practice
Passion 6: The Intersection of Your Personal and Professional Identities
Passion 7: Advocating Social Justice
Passion 8: Focus on Understanding the Teaching and Learning Context
When looking into the different passion, my questioning seems to fall mostly into the second passion: Desire to Improve of Enrich Curriculum. Since what I want to be able to do as a teach is to infuse agricultural studies into the general science curriculum. There are already a few great sites that give ideas on how to do that such as: www.agclassroom.org/, oklahoma4h.okstate.edu/aitc/, and wisagclassroom.org/. Along with many other state specific resources.
And I want to be able to do more than just having students create a school garden (even though this is very valuable). I want my students to be able to be able to view agriculture as a part of daily life, even though they may not see it or be a direct creator of it. I also want them to be able to skeptical of what they see/hear on the news, the internet, and from their friend and family so they can take in multiple outlets of information and make an informed decision about topics. Like seedlings need a solid foundation to grow big and strong, so too I hope to give my students a foundation they can rely on their whole life long.