Growth mindset is a very important part of success and achievement, as it helps you learn from mistakes, try again, and be the absolute best you can be.
I feel that I have gained a growth mindset perspective on things, and from that, I have become a better and more engaged learner. This can be seen in many of my recent projects such as my body biography project. In this project, my group and I were assigned a character from Shakespeare’s play, Julius Ceasar. We then had to research our character, trace and cut out a body, then use no words, just symbols and drawings to represent our research. Our assigned character was Gaius Cassius, and the questions that we researched were why was he important to Shakespeare’s play, what is his historic importance, where did he live/work, when did he live, and who was he? Each person in my group was assigned one of these questions, and we all put our answers on a google document.
Once we did that, we thought of a good position for our cut out body. We chose a position where he had one hand on his hip and the other over his lip, almost as if he were shushing someone. When cutting out the body, my group used red paper because it symbolized the blood shed of the wars that Cassius fought in. Then my group proceeded to add the symbols and drawings. Some of the drawings we put on our body were trees and dirt roads that represented his travels, a bloody sword to represent his homicide, some armour on his shoulders to represent his time in the army, telescopes, books, and glasses to represent his study in philosophy. These were only a few of the things that were presented on the body. We then showed our presentation to the class.
I learned a lot when working on this project, about Gaius Cassius, and even about some of the characters that other people researched. I learned that Gaius Cassius studied Philosophy, had a son, was born in Italy, his father was killed by Pompey, and near the end of his life he went into deep depression and ordered someone to kill him. I also learned that Gaius Cassius had a half Sister that was the mistress of Julius Cesar, and that Marcus Brutus was his brother in law.
If I were to do this project again, there would be a few things that I think I would do differently. The first thing would definitely be to practice my script a little more before presenting. Another one would be to add a spine to the body (which was part of the criteria), and last of all, to add more symbols and drawings along the legs of our body. My continuous reflection on my learning is a good demonstration of growth mindset.
Also, even though I was away when people were building their bodies and adding drawings and symbols, I did not use that as an excuse to limit my participation. I chose, instead, to focus on catching up and working harder. I made a point of having someone fill me in on what was happening, and was eager to get things done and do my fair share of work.
Below are the links to my group members
My picture above is another example which demonstrates that I have a growth mindset. When making this growth mindset selfie, the criteria was to create a couple sentences showing growth mindset about something school related. After writing out a multi sentence goal, you would need get it approved and critiqued before you take a selfie to be the background. You couldn’t print your picture until it was approved by the teachers, and once you get the thumbs up, then you are done.
When creating my goal, at first I was confused and thought that it didn’t need to be about school. This was until I took it up to be approved and got sent back to fix my mistake. After this, I came up with a goal related to art (which technically ties in with school because art is an elective). My goal was to “improve my drawing skills by trying out different styles such as realism and anime. This will help me obtain a wider skill set to help me in the future.” After I got the sentences approved, I used a selfie that had previously taken, and made it the Background. After I got my growth mindset selfie approved, the teacher printed it out and put it on the wall with everyone else’s.
I think that my growth mindset selfie was very meaningful to me, and it was not just something that I said I would do and then never did. I took my goal seriously and have been trying to draw in different styles, one of which is realism. Even if I am not the best at it yet, I still Continuously try to improve and an example of this is in the photo below. This is my latest drawing in the style of realism and even though I know there are many things that could be modified and perfected, I am still proud of it
and will keep on trying to imorove, even if it takes a few failed drawing to get there.
