Educators sometimes fail to realize that our own personal mindset can dictate the outcome of achievement within our classroom. Before reading Carol Dweck’s book, “Growth Mindset”, I had not thought about how my own beliefs could affect my students. It’s important to understand that we all have characteristics of both a fixed and growth mindset. The fixed mindset means we think our intelligence is only what we are blessed with at birth, that it can not be changed or altered, or at least not significantly. Having a fixed mindset means we avoid challenges, give up easily, and ignore useful feedback. Often people with a fixed mindset feel threatened by the success of others. They see failures as a wasted effort and as an excuse to quit trying. If we do not try, we won’t fail and then we can not be disappointed. Does this sound familiar? We have all had students who react this way in our classroom. On the flip side, having a growth mindset means we embrace a challenge, see failure as an opportunity to learn, have persistence, learn from criticism, and see inspiration in the success of others. We feel determined to increase our intelligence by learning as much as we can. We also know this student as the one who loves a challenge and often begs us for more work. Read more….
Blended Elementary 