Passionate Teaching in Troubled Times

A revised edition of The Passionate Teacher, this is a must-read for every educator and future educator wanting and ready to invest wholeheartedly in shaping young minds.


Passion is not just a personality trait that some people have and others lack, but rather something discoverable, teachable, and reproducible. First published more than a quarter century ago, Passionate Teaching in Troubled Times is a hopeful guide to motivated instruction, drawing on the voices, stories, and success of teachers in urban, suburban, and rural classrooms. These ideas, and the stories of the inspiring teachers who embodied them, are as vivid and pertinent today as they were in 1995. But so much in education has changed.

As American politics are swept up in antagonism, division, and what appears to be a rebellion by vast swaths of the population against science, knowledge, reason, and truth—all of which can manifest as being against education—this revised edition of The Passionate Teacher seeks to address the new problems, opportunities, and conditions that have shaped education today: post-COVID learning, teaching history and social science without fear, encouraging kindness and anti-bullying in today's classrooms, confronting truths and falsehoods, and more.

The three pillars of the original edition: The Passion, The Stance, and The Game of School remain at the core of the book, amplified by five new chapters, including the voices of Teachers of the Year like Joshua Chard from Maine, De’Shawn Washington from Massachusetts, Carly Maloney from Utah, and Taylor Bussinger from Kansas.

Written in a non-jargon, down-to-earth style, Passionate Teaching in Troubled Times is what new and veteran teachers, and those who hire and mentor them, are looking for. With new material, this book offers the wisdom of teachers who daily employ their skills, their knowledge, their experience, and above all their devotion to every student in their path.