The mindframe "I am a change agent and believe all students can improve" really spoke to me in the book 10 Mindframes for Visible Learning: Teaching for Success by John Hattie and Klaus Zierer. I loved that this chapter focused so much on growth mindset, which is something that aligns directly with what we do every day at LTE. It is always a goal of mine to help my students develop more of a growth mindset while they are in my classroom, and to encourage them to embrace challenges, rather than rushing to complete tasks or learning goals. In addition to trying to support my students in this way, one of the quotes mentioned in the book from Carol Dweck, the developer of growth mindset, stuck with me: "Growth mindset leads to expending more empathetic effort in contexts where empathy is challenging" (Murphy & Dweck, 2016, p.487). This is definitely a reason that I strive to help my students develop a growth mindset, because I can tell a big difference in how students respond to conflict when they have constructive coping skills. I also think that personally, I have improved my own growth mindset within the last few years, specifically in my communications with parents. I always try to be conscious of the fact that everyone I talk to has prior experiences that I am not aware of. If I communicate after considering what type of communication I would want to receive if I were discussing my own child and what may be going through that parent's mind, I find that my conversations are more successful and I am able to forge stronger parent-teacher relationships.
I also connected to both the fourth mindframe (above) and the fifth mindframe, "I strive for challenge and not merely 'doing your best'" through many of the academic procedures I have put in place in my classroom. Both mindframes discussed the importance of keeping students engaged, both to continually challenge them, and to pre-empt classroom disturbances. In my classroom, each student has personalized goals that he or she is aware of and is able to pursue at an individualized pace. For example, writing goals in my classroom are posted on the wall with exemplars on a numerical scale. For each "number" of writing, students can reference this wall to see what writing goal was added on to achieve that level of written work. I did not create these criteria myself and then introduce them to my students, but I collected examples of work from each student first, and then organized them based on strengths areas of need. This has provided a student-friendly structure for goal setting during writing in my classroom, and each student can clearly pinpoint where he or she is at and where they will go next. When students exceed the existing writing criteria, it is easy for me to add higher "numbers" of writing to the wall with exemplars. This structure is one way that I continually challenge my students and support each student in making personalized improvements.
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AuthorCourtney Hayes is currently a teacher at Lone Tree Elementary Magnet School in Colorado. She has teaching experience in both primary and intermediate grades, and is passionate about personalizing her instruction to meet the needs of all students. Archives
April 2021
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