In Learning We Are All Connected

I have created a "toolbox" of sorts as a culmination of my journey through a course centered in "Connected Learning." My hope is this website can be used as a starter pack for teacher colleagues and a place for my future students to explore connected learning principles.  I'm currently not in the classroom anymore, so I wanted to create a space I could come back to when I am inside a classroom again. I originally wanted the blog  for this course to be that "space," but I wanted a platform that could evolve into a "shared purpose." GoogleSites allows for easier sharing and contributions by multiple people in the future. It also more organized and easier to navigate. This blog will still be linked in the "Get Connected" tab so it can still be a part of this growing space. 

My main question when thinking about a final project was "How can students take equitable practices home or beyond the classroom?" I'm all for the classroom being a foundation, the planted seed for connected learning, but most of us only have our students for one year. I want more than that. I want it to be the launching point for students to continue connected learning practices, whether that be a project within the community, work with peers on something with a shared purpose, or to fight for equity through their passions and interests. I am hoping if I model my classroom after these principles, my students will be a model of them as well. 

My goal for the site is to reflect the relationship between the importance of well-informed, guided teacher instruction and the transference to student work.Teachers colleagues can start here by getting a sense of what connected learning is and how to utilize it in the classroom, before branching off on their own journey. The other half would be for students to see what connected learning looks like beyond school assignments and my classroom. Students can be inspired by what other students are doing and start something of their own. All of this in mind with my main question humming in the background. 

As I created the GoogleSite, I wanted it to be a place where students could take equity not just home, but extend into their communities. I hope students act with their communities instead of just act on their communities. The absolute dream would be for the student's tab to also become a place where my students can upload and share their own work. It would be a beautiful thing to see my journey, my colleagues' journeys, and student journeys strung together by the thread of connected learning.

My GoogleSite has changed  A LOT since my first concept and has been expanded out and whittled down a few times. It was difficult trying to fit everything it without it being too overwhelming. So as you’ll see some pages are organized, while others are more free-flowing. I utilized a lot of the material we’ve used and learned from throughout the semester and I cannot wait to keep expanding the resources. This final make has been a great way to gather my thoughts around this course throughout the semester and charge forward. 

Please feel free to navigate through the different pages and subpages of my website. I’ve included this post on the homepage of my website to alert any outside readers of the story behind the sites creation. Thank you for exploring!

-The Wandering Grad Student

I’m looking forward to seeing everyone’s final projects through the week! I know mine has been keeping me busy. Let’s enjoy our last week together.

I have two ideas for my final project going forward. I am not currently a lead teacher in a classroom right now, but I work with small groups of students in different tutoring or fieldwork settings. Due to this, I feel I need my project to be a bit broader, as I want it to apply to lots of students in the future. I don’t have one particular group of students to base my project around so I think I am going to focus on the teacher end of connected learning. My two ideas are along these lines:

1. A Connected Learning Teacher Toolbox through GoogleSites. I want to create a site that I could use as a resource and share with other teachers as a way to better learn and utilize connected learning in the classroom. The toolbox would be a way to sort of categorize and continue my learning. A living and growing project. 

The shortcomings I’m worried about are:

I am familiar with GoogleSites, but I’m not super great it so I would need to do more research and exploring to best develop the site. Additionally, I really value creativity and I worry that something like a GoogleSite wouldn’t do the creative & interest-based aspects of Connected Learning justice. I want to find a way to bring in more creative elements for the final project.

However, I do think a GoogleSite toolbox would be a great way to set up something with a “shared purpose” in mind. I was planning on asking some of my classmates if I could incorporate their thoughts/blog posts on connected learning within my final project so try and create a space of shared thoughts.

2. My second option is something more along artistic lines, I was thinking of creating a mural of some sorts demonstrating what different aspects of connected learning looks like. I would include a written piece explaining the different aspects of the mural. 

My worries are that I won’t be able to capture Connected Learning accurately in a more artistic way. There are so many important elements and I want to include everyone. It may also be difficult to find a direction with the mural, as there is a lot more creative freedom than a GoogleSite would offer. 

While going into creating my final project, I want to focus on the question:

How can my students take equity home with them?

Find Five Fridays

I took the advice on our class blog and tried using a different search engine when looking for new sources. I tried DuckDuckGo and the difference I found in resources was a bit refreshing. I am a middle school teacher, so I wanted to focus on middle school level resources. I found 4 new resources revolving around middle school empathy and one throwback post from a past blog post!

1. I wanted to start my F5F with a throwback post from back in February. The blog post linked below was my reflection after reading “The Politics of Teaching,” on Storri. The short story is about how a teacher took an empathetic approach when talking to students about anti-semitic comments. I think it may be a resource we all need, when thinking about how to address politics in the classroom! See the original story here.

2. Quick Guide to empathy in the classroom. Provides articles, lesson guide, standards, and an activity about empathy for grades 4-6. It also provides a bunch of links to articles for kids and teens when it comes to learning about empathy.

3. Look at this super cool video about empathy made by middle schoolers at Lincoln Middle School. There video shows the hidden struggles students and teachers might be experiencing on a daily basis. Their accompanying statement is as follows: “Middle School can be a tough time.  Everyone feels so self conscious and judged.  So much is superficial.  But what if we could understand what life was really like for someone else?  What if we truly understood the struggles of others?  What if we accepted that we are all fighting hard battles? This video explores the themes of empathy; how our lives might be different if we attempted to understand how others might be feeling and treated others the way we would want to be treated.”

4. Explore these 40 kindness & empathy activities and worksheets on this “Positive Psychology” website. Seriously this resource is a huge comprehensive list of all sorts of exercises for young children all the way up to adults. Check it out here!

5.  Take a look at “5-Minute Film Festival: Videos on Kindness, Empathy, and Connection” on edutopia. I absolutely LOVE this resource! It provides a bunch of short videos, activities, articles, and more. It covers literacy aspects, social-emotional learning, research-bases sources, and even classroom management information, all based in empathy. Find it here!

I had two passion-inducing takeaways this week, both of which fueled a desire to unpack my thoughts and ideas about them. The first was from the “Conclusion” section in Teaching in the Connected Learning Classroom and the second is from “Weapons of Math Destruction.”

Teaching in the Connected Learning Classroom

Whilst reading “The Conclusion,” I was particularly drawn to the section of “Doing it Wrong.” I immediately related to “doing Twitter wrong” because I still don’t use my Twitter account because I always think I’m not using it correctly lol. However, as I read on, I became intrigued because “doing it right” is all circumstantial. It’s based off of the norm or what we are seeing our peers do. We observe and decide weather to adapt our practices to fit the norm or continue on in our comfort zone. Outside of social media, the idea of “doing it wrong” runs through every aspect of my life. If one of my teacher friends is teaching her read aloud in a different manner, I immediately question “What if I’m doing it wrong?”

The question comes from our confidence in our craft and is a very tricky one to navigate because sometimes we are actually “doing it wrong” and missing out on opportunities. For example, I had a mentor teacher who was trying to teach in project-based learning style without actually doing much of a project. He was in fact “doing it wrong” and it was much less beneficial to his students. On the flipside, my host teacher during student teaching thought she was “doing it wrong” when she wasn’t using flexible seating in her classroom like the rest of the middle school teachers. She decided to “do it right” and employed flexible seating just because it was the “norm.” It went horribly with her class because that particular group of students just didn’t benefit from it as a whole. She decided to leave her comfort zone and try something new, but it wasn’t necessarily the right thing to do. I think we should focus less on “doing it right” and focus more on doing what is “right” for our unique situations. Even if that means sentences with no hashtags in a tweet (:

Cathy O’Neil Weapons of Math Destruction

This video was my absolute favorite of all the readings/videos this week!The whole concept of “we cannot question things because we aren’t experts in it,” or “the authority of the inscrutable,” runs so deeply in our education system. We all have a handful of students who are naturally curious knowledge seekers or ones who take pride in challenging concepts.However, most students tend to not want to question the “expert” in the room weather it be their teacher, guest speaker, another authoritative figure, or even a peer. Even worse, a lot of times this behaviour is reinforced by authoritative figures who become angry at being questioned (i.e. some teachers and parents). However, our goal as teachers should be to not have complacent, knowledge-receiving only students. We want to teach our students how to *respectfully* disagree and question things even if they are not experts in those fields. How better to learn about something new?

Our “Make” this week was derived from a principle we’ve been learning throughout this course...shared purpose. I think this “Make” was one of the most streamlined and direct example of what we’ve been reading/watching about this semester. We know that Connected Learning is student-centered and I wanted to focus in on the importance of “student voice” in an equitable classroom. We’ve seen resources explaining how to tie together student interest, the community, passions, and the importance of a supported network of peers. 

While thinking about student opportunity that creates connections and involves community outcomes, I immediately thought about the importance of clubs! Sports are always hailed for their benefits for students, but it seems clubs don’t get the same praise. I want my “finds” to be a highlight of clubs that focus on middle and high school students. All of my “finds” are all clubs I have been involved with as a student and would like to see my students take part in or clubs I have been involved with as a teacher. They all provide powerful opportunities and connections for students of various interests.

1. Mock Trial. If you are unfamiliar with Mock Trial, it is a club spanning middle, high school, and collegiate years where students are given a real case and present both sides at a “mock” trial. Students spend months building evidence for the case and take on the roles of witnesses and lawyers. A real judge hears the case and lawyers act as the jurors to decide the case. Students are able to dip their toes into law, politics, and the community.

2. My Daughter’s Kitchen. A cooking club for middle school students who express an interest in food and creating healthy meals. It’s a program my school has and it’s a wonderful opportunity for students to learn more about nutrition. The club has a big celebration that invites the student’s families and community members to a feast the students prepare. It gives students skills they can take home to their families and communities. Most Philadelphia schools are celebrating this program. Read about it here.

3. Future Business Leaders of America (FBLA). 

 FBLA helps high school and middle school students prepare for careers in business through academic competitions (FBLA Competitive Events), leadership development, and educational programs. Students can prepare for college and careers through a variety of leadership, community service, and academic activities. It gives students opportunities to network with other students from different areas, as well as entrepreneurial options and scholarships. Read about it here.

4. Science & Technology Club. A club that celebrates and explores all things science & tech. The reason this club is so special and awesome is because the goal is to let the students decide what they want to explore. It can be gaming, astronomy, coding, food science, robotics, chemistry, etc. It is ran off of student interest and gives the kids obsessed with all things science, an outlet to delve into it. It connects kids with similar likes and celebrates their passions. I’ve seen this done as a “girl’s only” club too to get more women involved in the sciences. A popular alternative is a STEAM club!

5. Book Club. For all your book lovers! Book club will give your students a million opportunities to connect with peers and their communities. I have liked a specific “Shakespeare Book Club” for Middle & High School Students where they tie literature, art, and drama together. It is also a club that can be done virtually with students or can connect different book clubs across the globe for different perspectives. 

Okay. I need to map my learning journey. But how do I do it? The process of working through the best format to display my learning, really helped me reflect on it. My format truly needed to reflect the path(s) of my journey. I first thought about a literal timeline. I realized it would be too boring for me (I need visuals!) and not really the most honest. Timelines are meant to be linear by name, but my journey isn’t linear. There are lots of dips, curves, and backtracking--a timeline won’t work. 

Next, I thought about a treasure map. There are many stops, false leads, and you get your “treasure” of knowledge at the end. Then I thought, do we stop learning though? Do we ever get to “the end” of knowledge, claim our prize, and never go back? No. A treasure map wouldn’t work either. 

I decided to do a piece of art. I spent a bit painting what I thought my journey looked like. I like being creative and enjoy painting, but I’m not really good at it, but enjoy it anyway! The piece includes mentors/friends, many paths intertwining and branching off, confusion, backtracking, dead ends, Eureka moments, as well as an endless cycle of learning. It is a bit chaotic, but so is my learning.

Final reflective thoughts: When looking at my finished piece, I get to see how all of my learning is a network. Each piece connects to the next or grows into something else. I have found that my mentors and teachers have made my learning part of theirs too. I see shared purpose through my mentors and ideology. I see how mentors have cultivated my learning in a way that promotes shared purposes. I’ve seen how one ideology or pedagogy bleed into the next or builds upon each other to create a shared purpose in designing my own personal teaching philosophy. 

Shared purpose in the classroom creates authentic learning experiences that give kids “skin in the game,” as my mentor would say. When student work goes beyond the classroom, beyond themselves, that is when students feel most like they have a voice. Their work matters and they are being heard. Here are 7 finds that can inspire you, assist you as a teacher, or beautiful outcomes of what this work can look like. 

1. MY first find was a NY Times Article I was introduced to a few months back that helps connect literature and social studies to what is happening today. Then it challenges teachers and students to take the connection and act on it by doing a community project. 

2. Straight-forward, direct “21 Tips for Connecting Learners to Their Communities.” This resource provides ways to engage and provide value to all your learners to get them involved with the community through their work. 

3. Here is an example from Calimera Park in Detroit. Students worked together to build this “Edible Hut” within their local park. Students learned about recycled products, their impact on the environment, and the idea of “Edible Huts” (i.e. structures built from recycled materials). The structure now stands in the park and provides a space for parties, performances, and a space to sell fresh veggies on the weekends. 

4. Next is a personal example I wanted to share. I completed a writing project with my 5th grade students around the controversial topics of zoos. We first researched zoos, watched videos, read articles, and made our own opinions on zoos. We then took a field trip to the Philadelphia Zoo and recorded some observational data on what we saw. Students then wrote a research argumentative essay, outlining their thoughts on zoos, and backing them up with supported evidence. Lastly, after we were all informed about our opinions, we wrote letters to conservationists, senators, zoo officials, etc. Explaining our findings and what we would like to see happen in the future. Some students even received letters back! My students were so excited to see all their hard work actually be put into use by sharing their work outside the classroom. 

5. One of my favorite ways for students to get involved in something bigger than themselves is with a model UN! Students can learn as a class, in groups, and independently about different governments, countries, and cultures. They spend a marking period learning everything they can about their country, the way it runs, and what are its current strengths/challenges as a country. Students then put their learning into action with a model UN. Find more information here. 

6. I’m not a math teacher, but I LOVE math. I think sometimes it gets left out of the conversations because it feels daunting or overwhelming to non-math teachers. Here is a really great resources that involves Math and the community for different ages & projects. 

7. Last, but not least. I couldn’t leave out our very own example coming directly from Arcadia students. The art department at Arcadia collaborated and beautified the Glenside train station! Way to get involved with community. Read about it here!

I found this week really inspiring. I loved looking for youth activists using their passions to make change and embody connected learning in this week’s “Find.” Looking at youth activism helped inspire me to write my own letter for change and think about how I could use it with my students. 

When thinking about how interests provide a path towards equity, we need to think about how we feel as teachers when we are impassioned by something. If we value the interests of our students as important and give them a space to explore them in education, we are directly creating a path to equitable learning.

Dear Supporters of Fossil Fuels,

I grew up playing in orange-tinted rivers; splashing each other with the oxidized water. There was never any worries about fish nibbling our toes, they’ve been gone awhile now. I think mom said it’s been a decade now. We knew the rules though, “No longer than 30 minutes in the river!” Our mothers chanted it over and over to us until we could chant it too. Longer than 30 minutes and our skin started to stain orange and it was harder to rinse the sulfur smell away. On summer days, we would take white T-shirts and tIe-dye them in the same river. Giggling as we plunged our cotton whites into sienne waters, marbling sunset colors and browns into our clothes. It was a stark difference than the black, black, black we saw piled around us.

I have scars on my knees from sliding down coal hills. Racing, stumbling up the black desert hills. Smiling with black teeth and stained faces. The summer after I scarred my knees, I won the most races up the coal hills. It was the same summer my best friend’s house sank into the ground. Their land weakened by the spreading mine fires underground. She came to live with us for a couple weeks, our mothers were best friends too. Their grandfathers worked in the mines together; they even got their black lung diagnosis the same year.

I stopped playing in the orange river and racing up coal hills when I entered high school. I was too grown up for that stuff now. Instead, my friends and I would steal a few beers from our parents’ fridges and meet in the abandoned mine behind my grandma’s house on Friday nights. We made sure not to wander too far into the mine where it could cave-in. A few years before a guy on the football team, got too drunk, wandered too deep in and never came back out. We knew better.

My junior year when the whole East coast got hit by Hurricane Sandy, we prepared as a town. We went to the open mine off of Wayne Street and piled up sandbag after sandbag until a wall was formed. Whenever it rained really hard, the groundwater in the mine would swell and flood our streets. So we prepared. The sandbag wall broke within an hour, sweeping away cars and bikes and earth. Our town was flooded for a week.

I return back home to my coal town every few months to visit my family. I’m always greeted with the same dark hills as I pull off the exit. It’s kinda pretty in the summer, when the light makes the mountains sparkle. You just need to remember to avoid the West side of town, there’s been a mine fire burning for the past 35 years and on the hot days, it smells like rotten eggs for miles. But don’t let that stop you from visiting our small town, fossil fuel supporters! We would love for you to tell us how fossil fuel is the future! We would love for you to tell us how the profit is worth our ancestors lungs and lives of wildlife. Your president said he’ll bring “the jobs back to coal towns!” We have moved on. We have lost too much. We have suffered for generations. A fire was forced upon us a century ago and we’ve been trying to snuff it out ever since. Through the death and disaster we’ve gotten it to an ember. An ember that won’t ever go out, but will remind us of the change towards clean energy.

Sincerely,

Aaaahhhh! I was so excited to see that this week is focused on the change we advocate and make based on our interests. It’s always especially inspiring when we see students taking action based off of an interest they have or a change they want to make in the world. I’ve included some resources below highlighting some youth stories I found impressive or deeply connected to. Since March is National Women’s Month, I’m making all of my finds about young women and their activism/change. This is my favorite Find Six Saturdays yet!

1. This young women was upset that her school didn’t supply adequate feminine products in her high school so she worked with a school club to make a change. Her change and calling out the stigma of menstruation caught the attention of a larger organization, who is now helping to supply underfunded high schools and shelters with feminine products. Read it here!

2. I couldn’t work on this resource list without including Emma Gonzales, whose interest in social justice became ignited when she watched her fellow classmates perish in the Parkland shooting. She turned the tragedy her school community faced into a call for gun reform and change. 

3. Amaryianna Copeny wrote a letter to President Obama in 2006 when she was 8-years-old in which she referred to herself as “Little Miss Flint.” In the letter she asked if she could meet with him or the First Lady during an upcoming trip to Washington, D.C. to talk about the water crisis in Flint, Michigan. 13 years later, Copeny has continued her fight for clean water in Flint and has also become a youth ambassador for the Women’s March.

4. In 2015, 13 year old Marley Dias was an avid reader and book lover. She decided to spread her passion for reading by founding a book campaign. Dias is the founder of #1000blackgirlbooks, with the goal to collect and donate 1,000 books to her peers that featured black girls as the main characters.To date, she has collected more than 10,000 books and spoke alongside Michelle Obama and Oprah Winfrey at the United State of Women Summit in 2016. This past January, she released her own book, “Marley Dias Gets it Done: And So Can You! ” which features opening remarks and praise from Hillary Clinton, Ellen DeGeneres and filmmaker Ava DuVernay. Her work has also earned her a spot as the youngest person on Forbes’ 2018 30 under 30 list.

5. Two young sisters named Melati and Isabel were passionate about the environment and ways they could make change. At ages 10 & 12, the girls founded their own company called Bye,Bye Plastic Bags. Their goal was to spread awareness about reusable bags and to design fashionable reusable bags to better the environment. 

6. Katie Eder was a young woman who loved being fit and speaking out for change. She combined her passions by becoming an executive director of 50 Miles More. Her activism is encouraging other young people to speak up. Inspired by the 54-mile Selma to Montgomery marches of the Civil Rights Movement, 50 Miles More began with a four-day, 50-mile march from Madison to Janesville, Wisconsin, the home of House Speaker Paul Ryan, who has blocked gun reform legislation time and time again.Eder’s mission is to make sure teens know that their voices are important and influential. She’s also a founding member of Future Coalition, which organized Walkout to Vote, the nationwide school walkout that encouraged young people to march to the polls on election day. Her activism dates to when she was 13 and founded Kids Tales, an initiative promoting creative writing among young people across the United States.

After doing this week’s reading and taking a second look at my post last week, I feel like I skipped a step. I focused only on my wobbles and went in hard on one wobble throughout last week. I should have taken a broader scope and just sort of waded around in my environment and get a sense of things first. Because of this, I took a step back this week and wanted to re-evaluate. After I did all the reading for the week, I was interested and motivated, but didn’t know where to start. This led me to trying the Loop Writing Activity. I’ve always loved free writing, but the idea of going back and underlining what idea pop out and writing again focusing on those highlights was genius. I was going to post my whole loop writing transcript here, but it was wwaaaayyy too long and sort of nonsensical at times. So I have decided to post the highlighted words/phrases that I used in my second round of the loop writing. 

I used the prompt: What are you most confused or perplexed about in your teaching? I focused in on these 5 concepts/phrases after seeing them multiple times in my first round of loop writing:

Building Student Relationships

Relevant Curriculum

Effective Classroom Management

Managing Work/Life Balance

Engagement 

After I did my second round of loop writing on these five highlights, I decided to use little mind maps to organize my thoughts around each topic. I included the picture of my mind map below. 

This week was a really interesting week for readings/videos and I felt really connected to some of the resources. I wanted to highlight three of the resources I loved this week, a book resource, and a few online connected sources. 

1. I absolutely love the work Christopher Emdin does and I’ve read his book For White Folks Who Teach in The Hood. It’s a great read and I suggest everyone that works with minority students give it a read!

2. The first resource our class has provided that I wanted to highlight was “Loop Writing.” Loop writing is a resource I used to help me with my questioning this week and sort of back track and record my thinking. Take a peek at my next Tumblr post to see some of the process!

3. “Wanna See The Movie” is the next resource offered that I wanted to talk about next. I thought the video offered a different perspective and an interesting way to see things from a child’s perspective. I didn’t love the video itself, but I thought it was an interesting concept.

4. My third resource taken from this week’s roster was “Finding Myself in My Inquiry: A Teacher’s Story by Sarah Capitelli.” I found it really inspiring and comforting to see someone else find themselves through inquiry. 

5.Chris Emdin’s Ted Talk is another really cool source to watch. He mentions similar things as in his book, but goes more into a crash course for white teachers. Give it a watch!

6. I found a really great reflective thinking resource on a responsive classroom site. It was great in helping me with my Loop Writing and reflective thinking. Read it here.

When I first read the prompt for this journaling exercise, I’ll admit I was a bit intimidated. I really enjoyed reading the article and I thought the concepts of “Pose, Wobble, & Flow” were really well explained. However, it was really difficult to reflect on places in my practice where I had a strong-rooted “pose” so I decided to jot down some key aspects of my teaching. I thought about my classroom management practices, curriculum, routines, and influencing pedagogy. I knew I had very little control over my curriculum and I was pretty happy with my classroom management style. My routines could use a bit of work, but I had been noticing a pushback from my students in one of my deep pedagogical beliefs: growth mindset. 

A few years ago when I first started reading Carol Dwek, I was sucked in immediately. I LOVED everything about growth-mindset. I thought it was the perfect combination of support and grit that students needed. I read as much as I could about it and it became a deep, fundamental part of my teaching. It became one of my “poses.” I try to embody my “pose” in all of my teaching and am very transparent with my students about having a growth-mindset. We do many exercises and examples of what growth-mindset looks like. But lately I have been receiving some push back from my students over the idea and I’ve recently read an article about the negatives of growth-mindset. I wasn’t ready to abandon all hope on something that’s been a part of my teaching for years because there were a few kinks so I decided to start with re-examining my “pose.” 

I knew that my enforcing growth-mindset with my students wasn’t really working anymore and it began to feel more like a problem than a solution. I didn’t really recognize that I was “wobbling” in this area of my practice, but I found what I needed to reflect and note take on over the week. 

Throughout the past week, I’ve been jotting down notes on my personal calendar when I noticed anything related to growth-mindset and my “wobble.” I wanted to highlight two instances that stuck out throughout my reflective time. The first instance was on my second day of reflecting when we were working on a writing lesson. One of my students was getting frustrated with his writing and so I checked in with him about the issue. He was frustrated and didn’t want to write anymore so I reminded him about our growth-mindset practices. He got really upset and said, “If I don’t know what to write, trying really hard isn’t gonna help me!” I honestly wasn’t really sure what to say in the moment and so I told the student to go back to his brain map, while my thoughts started swirling around what my student said. I provided the supports and motivation, he just needed to add in the grit. It was a bit disappointing, but revealing so I kept at it. 

The next instance was 3 days later during independent work time. Students have about twenty minutes at the end of the day to start homework or finish up any assignments they may need to complete. One of my students, a naturally ambitious girl, was vigorously writing and then erasing her paper over and over again. I checked-in with her to find out she was editing a writing assignment I handed back earlier in the day. Now usually I love when students take charge to revise their own writing, but I could see how visibly stressed she was over her writing. She kept saying she was having a growth-mindset, but the word “perfect” kept slipping out with it. “I need to redo this until it’s perfect.” Now I thought I did a better job at teaching my student’s that growth-mindset is like picking yourself up every time you fall, but it seemed like it was getting equated to “perfection.” I wanted to figure out where I was wobbling with growth-mindset so I employed the help of my students. 

My last day of reflection, this past Wednesday, I switched around our morning meeting to focus in on growth-mindset. I had students write on sticky notes a few words that came to their mind when we talked about “having a growth mindset.” (I wanted to include pictures of the sticky notes, but students wrote their names on their sticky notes). Students wrote words like “keep trying,” “work hard,” “try until it’s perfect,” “try again,” “annoying,” “really hard,” “don’t give up,” and “I don’t like it.” As you can tell from their responses, it was a pretty mixed reaction. Students had misconceptions and I was starting to realize that maybe I was pushing having a “growth-mindset” at times when I shouldn’t be. There is a difference between telling your students to keep trying even when it’s hard and to keep doing something even though you hate it.