My Essential Question

        How can I foster a love of learning in my classroom? That is the simple, yet foundational question I have settled on as an essential question to my development as an educator. It is my belief that children love nothing more than learning and exploring; I always think back to my experiences in elementary school, when I was excited to go to school and play with plants and ant farms and draw. This might not seem like essential learning at the time, but it truly is a love for learning, albeit one we do not acknowledge. We measure adequate yearly progress, and how well a student does on tests, but do we instill a love for learning in students? I remember a quote from Carl Sagan, the famed astronomer and educator, that resonates with me as it relates to this topic:





       While this particular quote is about science, it can really apply to any facet of the educational process. I remember volunteering in first-grade classrooms when I took FNED 346, and also in my own father's second-grade classroom. These students are happy to be at school, curious about the things they are learning. This probably is a generalization, but I feel like the love for learning that occurs at such an early age is inevitably lost somewhere along the way to the graduation ceremony and diploma presentation. Save for a select few , maybe a half-dozen or so teachers at most, I never quite felt that curiosity and yearning for knowledge in a classroom as a high school student. These, of course, were the classrooms that I look back on as the classrooms that helped push me to study education and want to teach myself. How can I replicate those classrooms, and that atmosphere of active, electric learning that I experienced?
        Another educational theorist who's opinion I hold in high regard with this topic is Sir Ken Robinson. While I don't quite have the space here to explain why his theory on education is so prescient to me, I can post a TedTalk in which he explains it pretty well. Yet another theorist and educator whose philosophy I subscribe to is Ernest Morrell, who gave an inspired speech last semester on how to create "revolutionary love" in the classroom.
       So, while my question is basic, the scope is large and complex. So many teachers have tried and failed to create such an atmosphere, and whether the failure was their own fault or otherwise, this problem needs to be fixed. Again, my question is, how can I do that? Rage, rage, against the dying of the light.