In a recent article in US News and World Report, the author talked about how important it is for colleges that applicants show some kind of passion for what they do or what they are interested in—that passion distinguishes successful students. What colleges call passion is often referred to as pleasure-driven learning or specialization by homeschoolers. Parents often feel that these activities are frustrating, boring, or tiresome (would you PLEASE stop playing the piano!!!), but colleges clearly value such activities. Why?!! Pleasure-driven learning is about nurturing children’s love of learning, so they become lifelong learners who can adapt to any situation. As the world changes, we need lifelong learners to understand it all.
If you’re a parent who finds your child’s joy-based learning somehow frustrating, brace yourself! While it sometimes feels like your student isn’t attending a “real” school at all, you’ll often find that they’ve covered not only their core classes but three other music classes as well when you compile their transcript of their Pleasure-Driven Learning. Joy can certainly be annoying—but the good news is that the irritation you feel can be a way to spot joy-driven learning in your children. If you’re having trouble discerning where their passion and interest lies, ask yourself what your children are doing that annoys you. What do they do every day when they should go to school? Most of the time, that’s exactly what annoys you, as is your child’s enjoyment-driven learning. Take advantage of it!
Learning focused on joy can give you inspiration for your core classes and help fill your student’s high school diploma with some electives. It gives colleges exactly what they want, the passion they want to see in teenagers. Passion means her interest lasts for years—preferably every four years of high school, or at least a few years.
Learning for fun has many side effects: It can make you more collaborative with your teens, so you’re not always trying to force them to learn things they aren’t interested in. It can reduce burnout if your student is more engaged in what they are doing – if they are more engaged in what they are learning, they will burn out less and need less breaks. It can also make learning more meaningful to them, because learning seems to make more sense when you apply it to something you really care about. If you work with this, you’ll end up with an interesting student that colleges pay for going to their school!
Thanks to Armond K Joseph | #Working #Pleasure #Driven #Passions #homeschooled #student
