Like a growing plant, your mindset can grow and change. In this unit, I learned that failing something and being really talented in another area is totally normal. But it’s when you choose to practice what you’re already good at is when people don’t learn or develop new skills and take risks. “If ripe you rot, if green you grow!” This is a quote that really stood out to me because it tells us that while it’s fun to do things you already know, people don’t get better unless they practice. During this unit, videos played a large role in our learning. We watched a variety of videos from uplifting self esteem clips to famous people such as Chris Hatfield and their journey to becoming who they are today. This taught me that with perseverance, hard work and determination, I can achieve anything! Other people including teachers and parents can influence your mindset too. Certain types of criticism or feedback such as “you’re smart!” causes a fixed mindset versus feedback such as “you worked really hard!” Trains a growth mindset. The two mindsets can be changed over time, but it all starts with which one do you wish to have?

Growth Mindset Long Term Goal

Before beginning our selfie project, the class was asked to brainstorm growth mindset goals that we could achieve this school year. Above is my brainstorm which includes many potential goals in the following categories: Dtermination, Attitude, Effort, Challenge, Social Interaction and Perseverance. After completing the brainstorm, we had to choose one that we really liked and wanted to work hard on.

Top Left: Draft #1, Top Right: Draft #2, Bottom Left: Draft #3, Bottom Right: Final Product

The three images above show my progress for my Long Term Goal Selfie. Starting with draft one, to the final draft after revision and feedback, these four photos are very similar but still show my improvement of font and placing.

Growth Mindset Self Reflection

I’m pretty proud of my Growth  Mindset  Paragraph Reflection. It includes one of my favourite quotes and a brief write up on its author, Margaret Thatcher. The actual reflection part of this text talks about some of the areas where I tend to have a growth or fixed mindset in, as well as some short stories of my own life and the challenges I as a high school student face.

A Famous Growth Mindset 

During our Growth Mindset lessons, we were asked to write a paragraph about someone famous who showed a growth mindset. For me it was Bethany Hamilton. Although she’s not your everyday pop star or Hollywood actress, she demonstrated a strong example of a good mindset that many of the most famous people lack. Click here to view her full story.

What I took away most from this unit on Growth and Fixed Mindsets is to never feel afraid to fail and keep trying again and again. If you never get back up again, you could miss out on a lot of opportunities. After all, failing an assignment is just another opportunity to try again.