Growth Mindset

Growth Mindset

My teacher, whom I idolize, uses a growth mindset in her classroom, every single day. She makes the classes and lessons interesting for her students, in her Creative Writing class she gives prompts they find interesting and fun to write. For example, in her class right now they are writing a story of a superhero, dealing with a modern day social issue, like social media, depression, anxiety, race, sexual orientation- they are able to write about an issue that they are dealing with on a daily basis, and then fix it. They can fix the wrongs they see every day and it motivates them to write these beautiful papers about something personal to them. This motivation creates a growth mindset because they are excited to write, they are excited about the assignment, and they are willing to participate. 

In her English 11 class, I see how she gets her students to engage, and she does something different than I have ever seen- all the reading is done in class. This goes against everything I have ever been taught, and I don't know if I will follow her lead on this in my own classroom, but for her, it works. She has them do all the reading in class, so she knows they are all on the same level, they don't need to spend hours going back and reviewing for those students who didn't read, she doesn't have to fail students that had to work late and didn't have time to get to their reading assignment, but she does get to teach each student, even those who struggle to understand the reading.  We are taught how important reading homework is and how we should always assign reading homework, and like I said, I still probably will, but for her, she thinks her students have more of a growth mindset if they are able to not feel left behind. She prevents this, by making sure her students are all on the same level, throughout the whole learning process. 

I'm not sure if I will use her ideas, but I do know I want to encourage a growth mindset in my classroom, whichever way I can.