Having the growth mindset is very valuable! I have had many students throughout the years that believe that they know it all and cannot learn anything new. I also have had several students that believed they would never learn or succeed at anything. Instilling the motivation for students to challenge themselves is one of the most important things that a teacher has to do. Another major task is to make sure that students have the ability to accept failure and learn from their mistakes. This is very important, especially when the RIGOR is the term I have heard more than any other in this past year! I have had many teachers complain about how hard my class is and how hard my assessments are. Many have said that they just cannot give their students such bad grades, especially those that are not used to making so low. I have been asked, "Don't you feel like you are hurting your students confidence?" MOST CERTAINLY NOT! I feel like the relationships that I build with my students and the conversations that we have after tests and challenging activities actually boost my students' confidence!
My goals at the beginning of this semester were to learn about new technology tools and utilize them in my classroom. I feel that I have already used several tools that I have learned about. I have used InstaGrok and Symbaloo to create different activities for my students. I also have taken several things away from my PLN (lesson plans, strategies, tools, etc.) and implemented them in my classroom! I think that having a growth mindset about my all of my grad school classes will help me through them. Realizing that things are not always going to be easy, and I have to put lots of effort in order to learn the most out of each assignment will only help me in the long run.
I love your title to this post! It is so true. I have had many encounters with people that would fall into the category of the "know it all". I agree that having a growth mindset is very valuable. It affects all learning no matter the age of the person.
ReplyDeleteIt makes me so happy to see that you are challenging your students and aware of the relationships you are forming with them. In my opinion, making that connection with students is the MOST IMPORTANT thing a teacher can do. I actually just read another blog post recently about this very topic. This is the link in case you are interested:
http://pursuitofajoyfullife.wordpress.com/2014/01/26/what-students-remember-most-about-teachers/
Glad to hear that you are reaching some of your goals for this class. I too feel that having that growth mindset will help in getting through my grad classes. Not easy, but definitely worth it!