The first time when I heard about growth mindset, it was a little bit confusing. I come from Mexico, and during my whole life I’ve been learning English. But one thing that traveling abroad has taught me, is that a person can read, research, and gather a lot of information about a place or a country, and it won’t compare to the experience of actually living in that culture. So, when my colleague was introducing me to this concept, it was still not quite clear for me. I attended several professional developments where this concept kept repeating, and I was still confused. I asked my buddy to explain it to me in a simpler way and finally it started to make sense and suddenly my AHA! moment struck me. I started to connect the dots and it just blew my mind! When I truly understood it, was just amazing! I realized that growth mindset is a way of living life and that I have being doing that since I can remember and I didn’t know there was an idea, a concept, a belief. Suddenly, it started to make all sense to me, to my life, to my teaching.
Watching the videos from the creator of Khan Academy, reading about mindset, learning how to change a fixed mindset to a growth mindset sounded so natural, so fluid, so amazing. The information just flowed into my brain without smoothly.
All of what I have had access to has helped to put names to the way I like to be professionally and personally. My whole life I have applied a growth mindset. I enjoy challenges and I like to try. I always tell my students “nobody was born knowing everything” That is why I constantly try to read, learn and do different things, because all of that help me grow in all my areas as a human being.
And like that, as a regular human being, I have my fears, I have my doubts. I have failed (hugely failed). I have gotten hurt, lost energy, time, money. I have had tough moments in life, but I always try to see the best and learn from it.
This is the way I teach, this is the way that I try to live my teaching with my students. I share this knowledge, passion, point of view, (still not sure how to call it) and try to embed into my students´ hearts and minds. I want them to see life in a way that there is no limit. That if they fall, they can always stand up and learn from that. That is why for me sometimes can be difficult to follow the Texas TEKS, because it can be to rigid and I try to teach everything but I embedded in a seamless and interesting way, where my students learn everything they know, but in an original way.
During my Lamar/Apple journey, our mentors asks us to think on many aspects of our classrooms and how we can integrate growth mindset in our teaching. Two of these questions are:
- When and how often will you promote the growth mindset?”
- How will you communicate the message of “yet” to your others?”
I did my homework and gave it a lot of thought to answer these questions. The answer I cam was that I can share that the growth mindset is embedded in my classroom from day one. I am not sure yet how to explain this. I just do it on an everyday basis. It is not a script for me, but I will try to do express this with an action plan.
How I implement growth mindset into my students.
I think that right now this process can be divided in two areas: Building Relationships and Create an Authentic Learning Environment
Building Relationships
One of the major things I work with my students is to build meaningful relationships. I have learned in this career that teaching youngster is just amazing. They can always tell when an adult is for real or not. I became consciously aware of this until my third year of teaching (now I am starting my 5th). I came to confirm my beliefs on my fourth year. I could consciously experience that when a teacher builds a good relationship with a student, the student will start look up at the teacher. The student won’t see the teacher as a threat or lame. The student starts to realize that the teacher is caring for him/her. The teacher wants her/his success and is there for whatever is needed. In one way or another, this is what I do every day. with my students. I work hard to build meaningful relationships where students and I bond based on honesty and respect.
Create an authentic learning environment.
One of the many times my master’s degree coach Dr. Thibodeaux gave me feedback made me feel great. The way she did it, the words used, how it was given made me feel safe and build my confidence. Moment. I shared with her how I liked to teach and she gave me amazing feedback, she mentioned several things in my piece and she agrees with me. This feedback made me feel great. Not only a person I respect and admire gave me amazing compliments, but it also made me realize that the way I teach can be written and putting in words. And this is what I am trying to. Coming back on to our subject, when a positive learning environment is set up, learning starts to occur naturally and effortless.
But what is a positive learning environment? For me it can be resumed to GROWTH MINDSET. This is how I teach my students. I put myself in their shoes, try to relate to them in what is interesting and connect it to real life scenarios. I ask them to do stuff where other skills are needed, and they come with their own solution. I teach them how to use technology, books and many other physical and digital resources, but they come with their projects and own ideas. And to be honest, for me, this is a sublime experience. When I see how my students are engaged, see them asking deep questions, researching for long periods of time or even watching arguing with them as of if a fact is fake or nor, or if that date is not accurate, well, these situations give me goose bumps.
I can see how my students want to learn and not do anything. It is just great for me.
So, as a conclusion, I can say that my application of Growth mindset, my moment of “yet”, how I promote all this is on an everyday situation, every single moment. As for what tools I will use, I can not stop saying all of them, but at least for me will be different websites, in-class books, using my TEKS and content instruction and everyday life situations.
As I was told when creating my ePortfolio, this document is alive and I think it will change with time. Please feel free to come back whenever you want.
Digital Learning Mindset 