Chabot Student Teams creating Passion and Purpose

Not only did Chabot students drive the initial idea to create the Passion and Purpose Program, they also were prime movers in establishing the contours of the program. In one of their first meetings, the student team’s goal was to imagine how this program might work, what lessons/units could be created, what pedagogy could inform it. The questions below grew out of their first exploratory meetings:

• How can the Passion Timeline be used as a meta-cognition tool?

• What is the connection between Equity and the Passion Timeline?

• What is the connection between Moral Debt and Passion?

• How can this class  create agency, reduce passivity?

• How do we build transitions between Self/College/Community?

• How can a student develop a passion mind-set for learning even if they are not yet sure  what they are passionate about?

• Will this course have failed a student if they leave it still not knowing what they are passionate about? 

• How can Passion be tested, quantified? 

• What does a Passion Mind-set look like?

• How can teachers find space to explore choices inside lesson plans, and to create their own based on the class need?

• Branding matters. Delivery system of the concept matters. Space matters.  How can  the program support this?

• The LESS a student knows about what they want to “do,” the more crucial it is for them to get involved in their community? How do we test this theory?

• What role does Gender play in developing one’s Passion?

• How do we leverage student stories to help mold curriculum?

• What theories from the disciplines can help shape context for students as they explore passion? (Art, History, Biology, Linguistics, etc.) 

• How to get students and ourselves comfortably off-balance? 

• Students have had 13 years of a particular rhythm in their schooling. How can we disrupt that rhythm?

As part of their work,  the Student Team also created this Bibliography of potential texts and materials  to incorporate into the program. 

The Element: How Finding Your Passion Changes Everything, Ken Robinson, Penguin, 2009.

Why School? Reclaiming Education for all of us, Mike Rose, New Press, 2009.

The Other Way to Listen, Byrd Barker, Aladdin Paperbacks, 1997.

Total Freedom: The Essential Krishnamurti, Krishnamurti, Harper Collins, 1996.

Pedagogy of Freedom, Paulo Friere, Rowman and Littlefield, 2000 

Amusing ourselves to Death, Neal Postman, Penguin Books, 2005

Teaching to Transgress, bell hooks, Routledge, 1994

The Alchemist, Paulo Coelho, HarperCollins, 1994

The Little Prince, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, published 1943

The God of Small Things, Arundhati Roy, HarperCollins, 1997

Illmatic, Nas, Columbia Records, 1994

Jeff Bliss kicked out of class   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jo9WPkJsBLE

Jeff Duncan Andrade  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GB8mTOiQXjY

Paulo Friere: last interview http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aFWjnkFypFA

Octopus walks on Land http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FjQr3lRACPI

Powers of Ten: Adventure in Magnitudes http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0fKBhvDjuy0

Fruitvale Station, directed by Ryan Coogler, Weinstein Company, 2013

The Passion Project, Directed by Skye Ontiveros, 2013.