Revisiting your personal learning goals with a focus on mindset, net-savviness, and diversity.....

Until I went through this week's readings I really thought I had a growth mindset but now I'm thinking that I've been fooling myself all along, I'm totally a fixed mindset. The funny thing about it is in my 9th grade history class I use material from Dr. Dweck in our psychology unit. I really focus a lot on telling my students that they can improve through practice and effort, yet I'm not practicing that myself. I guess over time I just got in the habit of teaching about growth mindset and I never really took the time to examine myself too closely. 

I really liked The Power of belief video with Eduardo Briceno there were several ways it helped me to see ways I could personally adjust my own thoughts and actions. For example I've always had a really good memory some have even said photographic which came in handy when I memorizing dates, details and other random information for classes like history and english. However when it came to things like formulas and equations for math and science my memory couldn't walk me through how to actually work the formulas and equations. Because of this I would often say I'm a natural when it comes to history and english and that I'm just not good at math and never will be so why try when it comes to math and science. I see now that saying I was a natural was just as hindering as saying that I'm not good at something; it's just limiting myself. This could also totally be the reason that I'm a history teacher and not a math or science teacher.

I also need to remember this when I'm working my students as well as my own children. Often times as teachers all we care about is the final product not so much as to how you got to it (depending on the assignment). I need to remember that we all like to be praised and or encouraged as well and that when we are we often work harder to keep reviving that praise. 

Looking back at my goals from week 1, two of the three are somewhat growth mindset based; more confidant in promoting information technology and learning new resources to promote information fluency at the high school level, and one is more fixed; to understand and correctly build/use a PLN. Reflecting back when I first come up with these it was more like these were things to just check off a list to be able to say "yes I can do those". After the readings this week I have been thinking more about how I can more growth mindset focused an all of the goals as well as how I can help/share with my coworkers in a effective way. 

Comments

  1. Sara BrandJune 6, 2021 at 8:55 AM

    Like you, I am totally guilty of not practicing what I preach. I have been teaching my students about having a growth mindset, but I think I was using it more as a "you can do anything you set your mind to" sort of cliche and not really ingraining it into the culture of our classroom. I need to be more mindful of the way I speak to all of my kids... not just the strugglers, but the high-achieving kids who are at risk for stagnating when they do find themselves challenged.

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