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The opportunity to do

"Offer me a chance to contribute, and I'll work hard on it, with focus, and once I begin to make progress, I'll become passionate about it." -Seth Godin

We have all heard an adage similar to this: Do what you love and, if you do, you'll never work a day in your life.

The Godin quote above challenges this. Sometimes work must come before passion. 

The keyword here is "progress." When we can start to see that what we are doing is accomplishing something, then we can get a little more excited about it. It's when we fail to see that progress--doing 10 math problems and doing them all incorrectly, reading 30 pages and not remembering anything--that we begin to shut down, check out, and really become disengaged.

We must make sure we are setting students up in ways that allow them to make progress, to see noticeable accomplishments in their learning. When they feel these successes, they grow more motivated and passionate about their work. Without that necessary progress--the opportunity to do something and to do something successfully--we lose them.

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