3 Ways to Help Students Discover Their Passions
By: Michelle Spencer
Tags: Passion, Careers, Self, Education, Life Lessons

3 Ways to Help Students Discover Their Passions

Photo by Jordan on Unsplash

I’ve always thought you are lucky if you are born knowing what you want to do with your life. For me as a child, I knew I wanted to be a teacher. I used to play “school.” I used to give my friends assignments and grade them.

By the time I graduated from college, I had three potential careers: actor, disc jockey, teacher. I desired all three equally, although I thought teaching seemed the most dull yet stable. I applied for jobs in all three areas and the first one I got was as a high school English teacher. So I went the teaching route, performed improv on the side and amused my friends spinning records.

After seven years I left teaching, had babies, joined a start-up. But here’s the thing. I never actually stopped being an educator. I realized that my life’s passion was actually supporting learning for others. As a child I had mixed up that passion and defined it as “I want to be a teacher.” But in fact my journey as an educator has taken such amazing twists and turns.

The Passion Spectrum

I’ve observed thousands of students explore their interests. There’s two extremes on opposite ends of the spectrum for passion awareness.

At one end, a student believes fervently that they know what their life’s work should be. I’ve seen many students have fierce desires to become veterinarians or EMTs — both of which have lengthy learning pathways before starting a career. Another kind of individual at this end of the spectrum is the student who is deeply passionate about something that doesn’t initially seem aligned with a career. For example, a boy who only wanted to skateboard, or a girl who was obsessed with Queen Victoria. They know their passions, but there’s no obvious career pathway.

At the other end of the spectrum are the students who have absolutely no idea about their own interests, and just see a blank slate when asked the question, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” — an outdated and dumb question to ask by the way. Some kids at this end of the spectrum appear disengaged. And others present as nearly defiant about identifying their interests.

But most of us, adults and students, are in the middle ranges of the spectrum, having a couple of ideas about what we might want to do with our lives and a few compatible (or conflicting) goals for our work futures and career trajectories. And there’s always someone telling us, even if it’s just thevoice in our own head, why we can’t do one thing or another — that it is impractical, unachievable, ridiculous or dumb.

Stop Judging and Start Encouraging

But here’s the thing. Passions are a gift — strange and mysterious callings that the owner seldom knows why they’ve arrived. Parents and educators with the best of intentions sometimes try to talk students out of their impractical passions.

If a student is doing a physics project in science class, and she is passionate about Queen Victoria, a teacher might reasonably suggest to leave the Queen out of the physics project. But what happens when you say, “YES! Find a way to include Queen Victoria into this physics project.” What you get is a more motivated and engaged student, increased odds for a successful project where learning occurs, and a truly interesting and unique finished product. And in addition to the student learning, sometimes a teacher will learn something new too when they say yes to a project like this.

If a student is obsessed with skateboarding, what happens when you help him secure an internship at a local shop? If your community doesn’t have a skateboard shop, there’s a journey of discovery to uncover something connected to skateboards. For example, we located a small business in our rural community that manufactured snowboards out of a garage. Until the quest to find a skateboard shop began, none of us knew this snowboard business existed because it didn’t have a retail front nor a commercial listing. But the business owner did high end snowboard design for competitive snowboarders. Our student who was obsessed with “skateboarding” as a generic concept now was highly engaged and excited to be learning autoCAD and advanced design features for snowboards.

And, his passion matured and evolved. What seemed sometimes dumb to the adults around him — his desire to dress and socialize in the skateboard culture — morphed into a new sense of confidence, knowledge, and interactions with adults who treated him as a peer in the field, rather than a skater kid.

The girl obsessed with Queen Victoria simply outgrew that interest. Almost as-if she had been hungry to learn more about the Victorian era and had been denied the opportunity so her hunger grew. Once everyone helped her embrace her obsession, and turned to her as an expert in that area, and she soaked in all kinds of learning, she was satisfied. She went on to new interests. But the important thing, the amazing thing, was that for about one year, her focus became something that we all learned from, and her passion connected a lot of academic dots across subject-matter areas. We found ourselves talking about these connections in the lunch room with other teachers, and in the classroom with our other students.

So always encourage passions, interest-exploration, and even obsessions (with care).

The Passion Mix-Up and Discovery Process

Jordan knew he wanted to be a veterinarian. We secured a “Shadow Day” for him with a local vet. He was thrilled because the vet was going to be conducting surgery on a cat, and was going to allow Jordan to be in the room and potentially assist with the process. His enthusiasm was so contagious, all us adults at the school were also excited.

However, a couple hours later I got a phone call from the vet. Jordan had fainted during the cat surgery. He was okay but needed to be picked up and brought back to school. As school principal, it was never fun to call a parent and notify them that their child had gotten hurt. And for the injured student, in addition to the physical pain of an injury, they also sometimes suffered feelings of humiliation or embarrassment about getting hurt, even if they did nothing wrong and it wasn’t their fault for the injury.

Upon his return to school, I checked in with Jordan. And checked in with his mom later. They both indicated that he didn’t get hurt when he fainted, that he was feeling fine and joking about it, and that he realized he did not want to become a veterinarian.

Discovering what you don’t want is equally or maybe even more important than discovering what you do want. Most everyone in education has seen firsthand a peer in college who blazed a trail to be a teacher, only to discover in their last semester, when the field work requirement kicked in, that they disliked being in a classroom full of kids. Sadly, I’ve heard many tales of people who make that discovery but then stick with going into teaching because they already had invested so much time and money in their education and career preparation. Or they stick with teaching because they love the subject, i.e. physics, or math, or literature. They like the content, but not the kids.

I call it “passion mix-up”. The passion is true and genuine, but the application of that passion is misapplied. I thought my passion was to “be a teacher” but really my passion was to help others learn. Jordan thought his passion was to be a veterinarian, but maybe his passion really was animals. Maybe a better career path would be a breeder, or a trainer, or a pet store owner, or a circus performer.

Passion Meets Aptitude

This is where passion meets aptitude. Passion for animals, aptitude for … business? acrobatics? Who knows? Aptitude also must be discovered. What are your innate talents and skills? How are you wired? If you are passionate about music, should you play an instrument, do sound engineering, manage a band or teach? Such diverse ways to manifest your passion for music.

Jordan went on to launch his own graphic design business. And his portfolio includes a good number of animals and animal-like creatures. His aptitude was for illustration and graphic design, not scalpels and anesthesia. But perhaps his passion for animals has remained into adulthood.

Here’s what I’ve learned after 20 years of helping kids pursue learning through their interests and passions:

Always say “yes” to a student’s passion and find a way to help them explore it more fully. Never disqualify a student’s interest, even if it seems dumb, morbid, or non-academic. Think carefully about the differences between a student’s passion and that student’s abilities, natural talents, and aptitudes. Help the student recognize the difference between these two concepts. And to discover new ways to pursue their passion with alignment to their aptitude. Passions are gifts, and they arrive to us for reasons we can’t always understand. But aptitudes can be measured through cool assessment tools. If a student doesn’t think they have a passion, that’s okay. Instead give them an aptitude assessment and let them start exploring there. It will certainly lead them to a new interest-based discovery.

Recommended Aptitude Assessments

Here’s a few aptitude surveys I’ve used with students that work great, resonate as accurate with the student, and nourish a sense of unique self with talents and skills.

Gallup’s Clifton Strengths-Finder. This assessment is awesome for adult teams and for high school students. It focuses on individual talents and skills, and provides a “Top 5 Strengths” outline that explain the ways you naturally think, feel and behave. What I love about this tool is that it doesn’t point out your weaknesses. Its premise is that the most successful people are those who capitalize and use their innate talents. And that we shouldn’t try to get good at everything, we should build on our natural talents and surround ourselves with a team that collectively has well-rounded strengths.

When I was principal at New Technology High School in Napa, I was extremely fortunate to set up a pilot study with the education division of the Gallup Strengths-Finder. All four hundred of our high school students took the assessment, and then we guided them to think about their strengths and put them to use when they were working in collaborative groups with other students to complete learning projects. The Executive Director of Gallup Education even spoke at the White House about our outcomes.

Naviance offers a career aptitude assessment available from Hobsons. It recommends students to specific careers and links to college degree programs aligned with those careers. It’s a somewhat expensive, yet comprehensive platform that fosters amazing self discovery. When used as intended, Naviance truly helps students develop a college-going and career plan. I’ve seen schools double their college-going rates with it. However, the platform can’t work its magic if the school staff is not finding regular and meaningful ways to compel students and their families to use it.

The Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery (ASVAB) is a military assessment tool. It is technically a recruitment and placement tool, but students can opt-out of being contacted by a recruiter. The ASVAB is available to schools at no charge, and the results the students receive back are insightful and extremely detailed. The ASVAB is something that potential recruits study for, and try to improve their scores. It’s rigorous. As a school principal I facilitated the ASVAB assessment as an opportunity for self-discovery, and made sure to communicate to the students and their parents that it was low-stakes and not to worry if the math or language portions were hard. However, there was usually some pushback from a variety of stakeholders about offering this assessment as part of the school day because of the connection to the military.

Share Your Journey With Me

If you’ve made it to the end of this article, I think you might have a story yourself to share. I’ve implemented a “50 Coffees in 50 Days” project to investigate how interests, passions and aptitudes have impacted career journeys.

Have you ever experienced “Passion Mix-up”? How has your career pivoted based on discoveries of your own interests and aptitudes?

I’d love to speak with folks who have been on their career journey long enough to reflect on what has remained central and consistent throughout a series of changes, evolutions, discoveries, and even failures. Could you spare 15 minutes over a virtual coffee to share your story with me? Sign up here.