Mindset: Final Reflection

My reading has come to an end.  I have finished my book on Mindset and I am excited to take

everything that I have gained and learned from these readings and use it to shape me as a teacher with growth mindset.  In the last leg of the book, it discussed a lot of the ways that parents, coaches and teachers not only guide children on the path of mindsets but it also talked about how they themselves need to have a growth mindset.  If you are a teacher who is of fixed mindset but are only trying to have a growth mindset when around your students, they are going to know that it is a fake front and the encouragement that you are trying give them will be wasted time.  Children need the encouragement and praise to be as genuine as possible and the best way to do that is to have a growth mindset from the beginning.  This can be hard! 

As the book goes on further, it talks about how most people are a mix of the two mindsets.  That all of us have a fixed mindset about something and they found that it was usually ourselves.  As teachers or parents, we have growth mindsets when it comes to our children and we are always trying to get them to also have a growth mindset.  We push them and encourage them to keep trying even in the face of failure.  However, when the parents or teachers fail themselves or feel as it they have failed, they will turn to the small part of fixed mindset that they have.  The most important thing to remember in these times is to "Practice what you preach".  You need to listen to yourself and know that it is ok if a lesson didn't go as planned or that every student didn't get a 100% on the last quiz. 

This is something that I particularly hope that I can remind myself of daily when I begin my student teaching.  It is easy for us to be hard on ourselves but encouraging to others who are in the same situation.  Part of growth mindset is that we have to learn from our mistakes and appreciate those moments when we do fail for those are the times of exponential growth.  By no means should we go out of our way to fail, but remember that sometimes the failure is even more powerful than the success!  I know that not every lesson I am about to teach in the spring is not going to go as planned or that I have planned an activity that was not able to meet the objectives of the day.  It is going to very easy for me to think that I am a failure and that I should give up and only conduct lessons that are simple and boring.  However, by reading this book, I hope that I am able to use many of the things I have learned and help keep myself out of these "Poor me" spirals of mindset death.  I need to remember that those will be the times where both myself and students will learn and grow together.  It doesn't mean that any of us have failed; we just need to go back to the drawing board and see how it could have went better. 

I would highly recommend this book to anyone who is going into education but more importantly I would recommend it to anyone!  This book can be beneficial to anyone who wants to change their out look on life or wants to become a more positive person because as I mentioned in earlier reflections, living with a fixed mindset will start to effect your interpersonal relations.  There are countless suggestions within the book on how to start to change your mindset or how to strengthen an already growth mindset.  The most important thing to keep in mind though, is that this is a process.  You can't change your mindset overnight, it will take time and effort to help keep yourself on track to change!