And I agree with most what you are saying; I think the worst teachers are, at best, not passionate about what they are teaching all the way to, at worst, have n

And I agree with most what you are saying; I think the worst teachers are, at best, not passionate about what they are teaching all the way to, at worst, have no understanding of what they are teaching and are just "teaching" from a book. Neither one of those really conducive for for what I would consider a prerequisite for real learning: An environment of exploration and curiosity. But, I do disagree about teachers "giving passion"; I don't think thats possible. I think its possible for a good teacher, at the right time, to ignite a students curiosity in a subject. But that spark _has_ to come from the student, not the teacher. I don't care how passionate you are as a teacher, if the student doesn't give a shit, it's not happening. It's the teacher's job to fan it into flames of mastery, not create the initial sparks of interest. Although, it seems that most of the time these days, it's the teachers job to quell the sparks of interest from students and get them "back on topic". But even still, as a teacher, I think you have to accept that making that impact is not going to happen to 100% of the students in the class, probably not even 25%. And it's questionable if the teacher really had all that much to do with it; would the student have sought out information on their own outside of the context of the classroom? Hopefully... Would they have found their own set of teachers, mentors, resources to express the thing burning a hole in their head? Again, hopefully. Would it have taken them longer to do those things? Sure. I think, as a teacher, the hardest thing to do is not to take too much credit for the accomplishments of your students. You didn't do much, other than help orient them in the right direction, they did the hard part.