passion (element/zone/sweet spot/....)

what leads you to mastery...

I asked my dear friend and expert Karenne Sylester about learning a 2nd language -

her 3 tweet reply:

1) @kalinagoenglish in 140 characters, the absolute foolproof way? Marry a native speaker! Failing that: you must 'need' to learn it, to learn it.

2) @kalinagoenglish it's a funny thing, but without an intrinsic need driving the learning it's rare to get to stage where mastery of L2 (second lang) occurs

3) @kalinagoenglish Marisa wrote a post with some good free downloadable books! http://tiny.cc/k45cm

Wondering how true this is for any mastery....

wondering about flow/sweet spot/element/zone/passion... where work and play are one..

Sir Ken in the Element talks a lot about dance...the arts...theatrepp. 1-3

- makes me wonder... do they get paid less because they don't care about money as much...  or because they care more about ie: their "need" to dance ...

Godin writes in Linchpin p. 98- 

Passion is caring enough about your art that you will do almost anything to give it away, to make it a gift, to change people.

I'm thinking that standardizing a way to find/refine fashion, and then personal learning networks per passion, makes more sense today than standardizing any content.

Currently engaged in an ongoing conversation here, about standardized tests, where I replied with and am totally committed to realizing this:

Another friend Raymond Johnson @mathednet just sent this from the Challenge to Care in Schools:

"Often we begin with the innocent-sounding slogan mentioned earlier,
'All children can learn.'  The slogan was created by people who mean
well.  They want teachers to have high expectations for all their
students and not to decide on the basis of race, ethnicity, sex, or
economic status that some groups of children simply cannot learn the
subject at hand.  With that much I agree.

But I will argue that not all individual children can learn everything
we might like to teach them.  Further, the good intentions captured in
the slogan can lead to highly manipulative and dictatorial methods
that disregard the interests and purposes of students.  Teachers these
days are expected to induce a desire to learn in all students.  But
all students already want to learn; it is a question of what they want
to learn.  John Dewey (1963) argued years ago that teachers had to
start with the experience and interests of students and patiently
forge connections between that experience and whatever subject matter
was prescribed.  I would go further.  There are a few things that all
students need to know, and it ought to be acceptable for students to
reject some material in order to pursue other topics with enthusiasm.
Caring teachers listen and respond differentially to their students.
Much more will be said on this highly controversial issue in later
chapters.  For now it is enough to note that our schools are not
intellectually stimulating places, even for many students who are
intellectually oriented." (p. 19)

Feeling extremely passionate about this myself... believing it to be an ultimate even.. in helping others.. 

So...

another dear friend (and colleague per passion) Jim Folkestad and I are working earnestly (because we need to) on fashioning

1) an authentic passion detector (not for a grade, but in order to then purposefully select your personal learning network)

2) a tool to help develop/facilitate/validate personal learning networks (what we believe to be the new standard)

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