Student-centered instruction based on students’ personal interests and passions represents a mindset and a culture as much as a practice in schools. By tapping into students’ personal interests and passions, increased motivation results, advancing more active participation and learning within a mutually beneficial collaborative culture.

Quick wins

• Curate existing student-interest surveys for consideration by staff members for adoption and/or locally developing student-interest surveys for implementation.
• Establish a schoolwide plan to administer student-interest surveys.
• Reach a common understanding of what engagement and relevance look like in relation to students’ personal interests and passions.
• Leverage students’ personal interests and passions to develop connected lessons that amplify student thinking and understanding.
• Identify strategies for developing positive, sustained, and meaningful relationships with students that are anchored in the students’ personal interests and passions.
• Establish systems for assessing and monitoring the degree to which instructional activities build on students’ personal interests and passions.
• Identify what teachers need to learn in relation to students’ personal interests and passions to drive professional development.
• Increase teachers’ understanding of students’ need for competence and how to structure lessons that allow students greater opportunities for success.
• Increase teachers’ understanding of students’ need for autonomy and how to design lessons that allow students some level of influence on what and how they learn.
• Increase teachers’ understanding of students’ need for relatedness and teacher behaviors that promote feelings of affiliation and trust.
• Support teachers in providing students with multiple pathways for developing interests and passions and exploring and discovering areas of interests.
• Leverage the library media specialist in support of teachers’ efforts to align lessons to students’ personal interests and passions.

First steps

• Select a student-interest inventory for implementation.
• Involve teachers in discussions around student engagement to reach a common understanding of what both entail.
• Highlight and offer examples of how the role of students’ personal interests and passions increases student engagement.
• Consider implications for curriculum and assessment and support that teachers need to effectively design lessons that consider requirements in conjunction with students’ personal interests and passions.
• Help teachers know where to start in the design of lessons that address students’ personal interests and passions.
• Regularly survey students about their personal interests and passions as an ongoing school process.
• Connect students with school and community resources aligned with their personal interests and passions.
• Actively listen to students and ask questions between scheduled administrations of student-interest surveys.
• Consider ways individual teachers and the whole school can introduce students to new interests and passions.
• Help students see connections between their personal interests and passions and the required curriculum
• Help students prioritize and focus their interests and passions in relation to their academic and career goals.
• Feature students’ personal interests and passions publicly and celebrate teacher and student success relating to the work around both.

When encouraging lesson design and delivery based on students’ personal interests and passions, school leaders may face implications for curriculum, instruction, and assessment. Existing belief systems that challenge teachers’ adoption of this type of lesson design is another complexity faced. Varying degrees of experience in differentiating instruction to address students’ personal interests and passions may also present challenges to implementation.

Common pitfalls

• Facing challenges associated with designing instruction to meet a wide range of students’ personal interests and passions.
• Facing challenges associated with a passive culture versus an active culture.
• Receiving discouraging, disparaging, or dismissive remarks from an adult in relation to a students’ expressed interest or passion.
• Lacking a systematic approach to integrate students’ personal interests and passions into the design and delivery of lessons.
• Lacking expectations regarding teachers’ responsibility for student empowerment through alignment of lessons with students’ personal interests and passions.
• Holding inaccurate beliefs about designing lessons that address students’ interests and passions:
• Anything goes in terms of required standards.
• Requires more resources and smaller class sizes.
• Not suitable to all academic areas and that implementing this approach minimizes the subject matter students learn.
• Teachers must be technologically minded.

• What systems of support are needed to ensure the effective implementation of instruction related to students’ personal interests and passions?
• What strategies currently are being implemented to identify students’ personal interests and passions?
• How are students’ personal interests and passions reflected in the design of lessons and outcomes?
• How are teachers leveraging real-world connections to students’ personal interests and passions in the design of lessons?
• What are some barriers to aligning instruction with students’ personal interests and passions?
• What competencies and resources do teachers need to align instruction with students’ personal interests and passions?