Hello everyone! This not going to be a student blogging challenge. Nope, sadly not today. Today, I am going to be talking about growth mindset. This is a really big topic that I could spend a lot of time talking about, but I will keep it short for your sake.
A growth mindset is basically something that you can learn and develop. It is something that your can train to make you more positive and have a more optimistic look on things. For example, you could say ‘I’m horrible at sewing I can’t do it at all’, that would be a fixed mindset (the opposite of a growth mindset). However, if you said something like ‘I’m not great at sewing, yet’, that is having a growth mindset. It may seem small and insignificant, but if you add ‘yet’ to the end of your sentences, you will be more open to trying what your saying (like my example above).
Grit is also something that is really important in growth mindsets. Grit, which you can read more about here, means to keep pushing through something, even when the going gets hard. For example, if you have read my About Me Page, you will know that I Irish dance. I find it really fun, however it can also be really hard when you’re learning new steps. But, I have grit and push through the hard parts and I come out an even better dancer in the end!
Anyhow, throughout this project about growth mindset, I have been keeping a journal. In it, you can see how my mindset has changed throughout the course of this project. I find it really interesting to see how it changed, just by learning and expanding my knowledge about it.
This is my journal that I kept in this project:
Next, we made a goal/statement about something that we want to get better at in school. We had to make it broad, but specific at the same time. I think that I rewrote my statement like 3 or 4 times before it was approved. But thanks to all the editing, my goal turned out really good.
Below is what my final goal looks like:
As everything in PLP is, our goal was connected to something bigger. Our goal was connected to the next phase our project which was taking a selfie. So basically, we were going to take a selfie of ourselves, and put our goal/statement above our head. We could edit it anyway we wanted, as long as we kept our faces in it, and as long as we had our goal clearly visible. Later, we would print out our selfies and put them up around the classroom, to remind us about our goal. I’m kind of scared to post my selfie around the room, but I will face this head on with a growth mindset (pun intended).
This is my selfie:
Wow! This post was pretty short for such a big project…thank you for reading! This project has been a real eye opener to growth and fixed mindsets (mine especially!) If you want to share anything that you have a fixed mindset on and how you think you can improve it, please feel free to comment!
Best wishes,
-Dana
P.S. Here’s a really cool website that talks all about growth mindset