For many years innovative educators have used the arts to enrich their students' classroom lives. Teachers who have integrated drama, music, dance, poetry, fiction, and the visual arts within their classrooms have witnessed the numerous ways in which the arts motivate children to learn. But while the powerful influence that the arts have had on children has been well researched and documented, the effect that the arts have had on teachers has been overlooked.
The essays within this volume are a collective celebration of the ways in which educators within numerous fields, and at all grade levels, have used the arts and creativity to sustain their passion for teaching. The editors of "Passion and Pedagogy" have selected essays that bring readers into classrooms where pioneering practices enable teachers to grow, to create personal identities, and to feel empowered through the construction of dynamic partnerships with their students. Dialogues that precede each chapter were designed to bring authors' voices to a diverse set of writings that investigate new forms of creativity within the postmodern teacher's repertoire, the development of reflective and artistic classroom curricula, and the inclusion of gender, identity and multiple ways of knowing within educational theory and practice.