The Parable of the Sower comes from the Bible, Matthew 13. Jesus talks about how a sower scattered seed along a path, amongst rocky places, around thorns, and within good soil. Depending upon the environment depended upon whether or not the seed could develop into a plant, sustain itself through harsh weather, or thrive in the time of harvest. While Jesus was referring to the Gospel, this can also be pertinent to creating significant learning environments for our students and even ourselves as educators. The past few months have really made me step back and reflect, realizing that I scattered the growth mindset ideas onto paths with no depth, rocky places with no nourishment, and thorns with stronger holds. There is beauty in realizing my shortcomings because now I am choosing to walk away towards cultivating the soil that is my classroom and building a space for flourishment. There are some things I have written and creating to get to this place. Through the lens of mathematics, teaching 21st century skills in a blended learning environment demands a fresh approach to the learning culture. The combination of global, uninhibited connections within a structured, safe environment has the power to transform students into who we need to make the future one to blossom in. Amplified by Piaget's cognitive learning theory, my learning philosophy explores how my perspective on education translates into the classroom for my students. We gravitate towards making sense of everything around us through experiences, connections, and patterns so providing students opportunities to start making sense of themselves and others ensures the foundation for future growth. There was compelling evidence that in order to create significant learning environments for students, I needed to create significant learning environments for myself and others to try this together. Through Dee Fink's 3 Column Table, Learning Environment/Situational Factors Outline, and Questions for Formulating Significant Learning Goals and its comparison to McTighe and Wiggins' Understanding by Design Template, I have a metacognitive plan on creating significant learning environments for teachers to learn about how to create significant learning environments. The stage was set by my growth mindset plan but it was really shaped recently when I realized it really takes a village for the rehearsals and performance to take shape and come alive. I am committed to establishing significant learning environments that foster growth mindset through active engagement, not by passive means, by seeking and sowing the soil for our collective growth. With these things working together, the back of the puzzle box is really starting to reveal the big picture. Ideas are meaningless unless acted upon and implemented, and growth only comes out of reflection and adaptation. Creating a significant learning environment focused on authentic learning first will forge a stronger path for my innovation plan to mold students, fellow educators, and myself into the strong, powerful people we are capable of becoming. References Dee Fink, L. (2003a). A self-directed guide to designing courses for significant learning designing courses for significant learning. https://www.bu.edu/sph/files/2014/03/www.deefinkandassociates.com_GuidetoCourseDesignAug05.pdf
Dee Fink, L. (2003b). Creating significant learning experiences : an integrated approach to designing college courses. Jossey-Bass. Dee Fink, L. (2013). Creating significant learning experiences the key to quality in educational programs. https://media.wiley.com/product_data/excerpt/51/11181242/1118124251-7.pdf Matthew 13 NIV - - Bible Gateway. (n.d.). Www.biblegateway.com. https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew%2013&version=NIV McTighe, J., & Wiggins, G. (2005). Understanding by design (2nd ed.). Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development. McTighe, J., & Wiggins, G. (2009). Essential questions to promote staff inquiry and reflection (examples). https://jaymctighe.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/Essential-Questions-for-Educators.pdf McTighe, J., & Wiggins, G. (2012). Understanding by design framework. https://files.ascd.org/staticfiles/ascd/pdf/siteASCD/publications/UbD_WhitePaper0312.pdf
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Lately, I have realized that it requires community to build growth mindset. Personally, the last few weeks have been challenging, particularly when it comes to what is going on in my classroom.
It would be realistic to say that we all have students who simply do not care about our course or about school... or at least they give on this perception. This looks like heads down on desks, hands glued to cell phones, mouths talking about anything but the subject or talking poorly about the subject. What this really comes down to is attribution theory. Are students acting the way they do because of who they are or because of the situation they are in? It is easy to say that a student is just lazy or does not care... and it is very hard to realize that we are putting students in situations that produce the behaviors we get frustrated by the most. As the semester comes to a close, there are days where I just want to throw my hands up and stop investing my heart in caring about what other people are doing because it is exhausting having to face that they will not always (or seemingly ever) do what we want or believe they are capable of. This reflection really is a fixed mindset, something I claim to almost never have. I feel powerless, helpless, like there is no point in trying anything else because nothing will come of it. Naturally, by what I consider divine intervention, I find this infographic. Right now, I am definitely at the beginning of the road, the fixed mindset place. It feels like I am moving the opposite direction on a moving walkway, not getting anywhere. Since writing about my growth mindset plan, The Yet Mindset, I have learned that it takes more than just talking about a growth mindset to get there. It requires action to move forward into it and what I really need is to turn people around and walk against the grain with me. Developed in September this year, my growth mindset plan had an outline of steps but not how to implement the steps, picture frames but with no pictures. I also did not really have any walls to hang these pictures on. What has shifted is I am not waiting anymore for someone to build the walls while I twiddle my thumbs. I have to be the carpenter of the setting or I have to look for others who have walls built to learn from. This analogy translates directly to my professional learning, which transfers to the learning environment in my classroom. Being a part of the community built within my master's program has been the start, but since August I have joined a Building Thinking Classrooms cohort amongst high school math teachers in my district, as well as delivered professional learning opportunities for Algebra 2 teachers to move from the outdated factory model of education into innovative significant learning environments, which has began the cultivation of another professional learning network. With these groups, I have found some resources to start implementing in my classroom:
This is just a handful of resources I have available, but what does implementing them look like? It starts with my own mindset and reflection on what my classroom actually embodies versus what I think it should (but then blame the students for it not being a sparkly ray of sunshine). To really have an impact on growth mindset with my students, it starts with me creating the significant learning environment for it to grow and be reinforced. I periodically model growth mindset to my students; not a day goes by that I do not mess up an answer on the answer key or a plus or minus symbol in an example. When these mistakes do happen, I will be the first to confess that I made a mistake but show immediately how I will fix it and try to keep that experience in mind for the future. How do I give students this opportunity? The first place I see the biggest area of improvement is feedback. Using blended learning and the station rotations model, students would have access to content but also be required to go through feedback/feedforward cycles. These cycles can be teacher to student, student to student, student to teacher, or student to self. The feedback can be on explicit math content but more importantly, on the process of growing to have a better understanding of the world, strategically within the mathematics lens. Consistently investing the time for students to be a part of the conversation is necessary. I should not be doing all of the work because the ones doing the work are doing the learning. Does this exempt me from learning alongside my students? Absolutely not, but it does empower me to model for them what learning looks like, especially as they are young adults about to go out into the real world and get big jobs (like being a teacher). This has potential to shift away from grades being the key to the future but rather learning being the open door. Does this mean throwing them into the fire and just hoping they do not get burned? Does this mean throwing them into the deep end and just hoping they can swim or survive by floating? No. Supports are needed to wade into the water, get familiar with the foundations, and work towards the deep. Within my class on creating significant learning environments, I developed resources to expand my capacity to actually implement the concepts I have been reading about.
It is not enough to just say have a growth mindset and make students say "I don't know yet". I am setting the expectation for myself to create a significant learning environment where my students can thrive and embody a growth mindset through action and I am setting myself up for success by creating, finding, and joining significant learning environments for myself as a learner. It really takes a village to learn and grow.
References
Gerstein, J. (2014, July 27). The educator and the growth mindset. User Generated Education. https://usergeneratededucation.wordpress.com/2014/07/27/the-educator-and-the-growth-mindset/
Gerstein, J. (2014b, September 28). How educators can assist learners in developing a growth mindset. User Generated Education. https://usergeneratededucation.wordpress.com/2014/09/28/how-educators-can-assist-learners-in-developing-a-growth-mindset/ Practical Psychology. (2021, April 9). Attribution theory (examples and what it is). Www.youtube.com. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WoTBPwMeAyo
While I have never sat through the entire movie Back to the Future, I am well aware of its premise and some of the famous lines...
Being comfortable with being uncomfortable takes time, and with the help of discussion boards for my master's program, peers have really opened my eyes to seeing bigger pictures from different perspectives. I am a firm believer that we need to move away from the factory-model structure and towards innovative practices in education but that requires change. Someone mentioned the analogy of a time machine, and if you read any of my other posts, such as I Want to Be a Butterfly and New Digital Age, New Learning Culture, you will notice how I thrive on analogies. They help me connect the dots. Sometimes, it feels as though we are in the present and choose to go back in time by continuing to implement the same educational practices that we were a part of our personal experiences. But, consider this - do we choose to go back in time year after year from the present, or have we been perpetually stuck in the past and need to climb into the time machine available to us to jump forward? Past is comfortable in some regards because we can anticipate what is going to happen. The future is what scares us because we do not know if it will follow the patterns of the past (and actually I think we know it will not follow those past patterns) so when everything around us is zipping forward and it becomes overwhelming, a way to find comfort is sticking with what we know, even at the expense of others. Monica Oslo gracefully challenged my thinking by posing questions to my reply:
She also made me consider how to teach the past to understand what mistakes we made, what is cause and effect of certain events, and how we can learn from the past perspectives to move forward into the future. For me, it is more about using the tools of today and the future and the tools of the past can be used as a bridge to the here and now. We should not necessarily force students to use the past tools just because that is what we are comfortable with or "how we were taught", only using them as they were used in the past. I teach math so the tools of right now include Desmos graphing calculator and tools like PhotoMath, SymboLab, Wolfram Alpha, etc. Why not embrace these tools? There are still a number of teachers who think students should not use calculators ever. I actually was one of those teachers a few years ago because I thought WHAT! They do not know math if they type in 2+2 to get 4, the calculators will just give them the answers!!! What needs to change in my classroom (and with my mindset) is that structures can be put in place to have students use the tool but still understand HOW and WHY the produce the results they do. This could go back to visual representations and talk about the history of computation devices (i.e. abacus, slide rule, etc.) so when the technology does fail, we understand how and why it works the way it does and rely on our brains and experiences. We can then conceptualize how to create our own work without technology through a pencil and paper. We also can discern whether or not the technology is accurate. Technology must be utilized in a way that does not just generate answers. We need to have students generate questions and justify, explain, validate or discredit a resource or "answer". We need them showing their thinking with pencil and paper, through dialogue, through motion, through any medium, but also include technology as that medium. A really great video I revisit from time to time is the 3 M's.
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There was a particular topic I asked ChatGPT to help me check my work on an equation. While at quick glance everything looked accurate, there was actually a huge error in a calculation that resulted in a way off answer that I got. I compared my work to it, was able to tell ChatGPT exactly where its error was. It "apologized" for the error, made the correction, and bam! Our results matched. I have also asked it to make me problems and an answer key, just to see what it could do, and it created what looked like an amazing worksheet but all of the answers in the key were horribly wrong! It is not about relying on the technology to do all the work for us, but how to leverage it to build our thinking further, and we need to give students the opportunities to experience this because this is the reality of society. Another example I have heard of initial resistance but eventually embrace is spell check (check out spell checker history). I know I had weekly spelling tests in elementary school but do those still happen? Honestly I have no idea but we rely on spell checker for a lot of things. Does it catch all of our mistakes? Absolutely not, especially when we misspell a word that is another word! One of my biggest pet peeves is when people use the word "loose" for the word "lose". I do not want to loose my job! Wait, what? But as thinkers and learners, we use this tool but criticize it, analyze it, and even ignore it at times because it is not always right and we know and understand the bigger picture. Technology is only as "smart" as the user, so let's give our students and ourselves the opportunity to get smarter by seeing that technology is not replacing thinking, but we can adapt it to extend our thinking and perspective beyond what we can fathom.
References
3 M’s - media method modality and their roles in educational technology use. (2018, August 24). Www.youtube.com. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vZ56_tcvocY&t=1s
Minions - what?! (2013, July 27). Www.youtube.com. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MfylJy_nMbM pajak2d. (2015). Roads?! Where we’re going we don’t need roads!!! In YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G3AfIvJBcGo
Something that has been coming up as another component of a teacher's role that feels more catered towards checking off an administrative box than serving students is writing "I Can" statements on the board. Take a quick look at social media teacher groups and you will find the dark humor that comes with coping with the millions of expectations and decisions we face daily.
If I am being honest, "I Can" statements are really to support me along the path of the curriculum to maintain focus in moving forward with students. I use them to determine if students are on track or not. There are also attempts to bring students into the conversation about I can statements. You can find them on every set of notes, every Canvas page, every review. These "I Can" statements come from just taking the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills (TEKS) and adding "I Can" to the beginning, with an occasional break down in the TEKS (i.e. Algebra 2 TEKS 2A.4 says solve quadratic and square root equations, which is typically broken into I can solve quadratic equations and I can solve square root equations). There are also "I Can" statements with English Language Proficiency Standards (ELPS). For example, ELPS c4D could be written as "I can monitor understanding and seek clarification through listening." Let's be realistic, do these mean anything to students? My guess would be no. We do not intentionally bring students into the "I Can" statement creation because they are out of their control. It comes from state curriculum requirements to earn credits for specific subjects. What if instead we had "I Will" statements? All of my students can add, subtract, and multiply polynomials to some degree, but which ones will choose one method over another to demonstrate their understanding? All students can put their phones away but will they choose to do so? I bring this up because there is a distinction between something we can do and something we choose to do and will do accordingly. I can go to the gym every day for at least thirty minutes but will I? I can clean the dishes in the sink but will I? I can stop working during a holiday break but will I... depends on how much I can shut off the balls to the wall mindset I have going on. If we want students to be VOCAL and have ownership of their learning, we need to give them choice in what they will choose to do. We can tell them all we want on what they can do, but it comes down to will they do it and what learning environments are we creating to foster a sense of self-worth to decide they can and they will. More on teacher "I Can" statements for another day... but just something you can think about now, but will you think about it later and take action?
References
Bored Teachers. (2023, September). Instagram. Www.instagram.com. https://www.instagram.com/p/Cw2seuWvgXR/
After watching Angela Lee Duckworth's video for the thousandth time (this particular video seems to come up a lot not just in this program, but a lot of professional development workshops I have attended), I wanted to explore more. What has she been up to the past ten years? Is she still engaged in education and teaching students about these other traits that develop their character? She is!
I wrote about it in another blog post, My Name is Ashley, and I am a Recovering Procrastinator (believe it or not, it's true), and a new perspective I am starting to see is how growth mindset and learner's mindset can apply to procrastination. Growth mindset and learner's mindset is not something that you can implement in a day; it requires continuous, small but substantial incremental steps that add up. Growth mindset really impacts those learners who struggle in the traditional academic setting but not so much for high achievers. They see growth mindset is just another thing they can be smart about, which follows a fixed mindset perspective. Often times, my high achieving students stop trying when problems or questions become challenging, because then their intelligence cannot be questioned. You can't say someone is wrong if they never made an attempt in the first place, right? That's their viewpoint. They will believe they have a growth mindset, but it requires intentional reflection and metacognition to realize that no, you actually don't. Lately I have been privileged to witness some beautiful student character. I teach level and honors Algebra 2, and in level Algebra 2 I have a wide range of students. Students who have had to repeat every math subject in summer school or credit recovery up to this point, students who have major discipline and attendance issues with constant disruption to their engagement in the classroom, and students who at one point were in honors classes but decided for a number of valid reasons they needed to "level down". When students finish assignments early, I introduce them to the honors content for that day, which typically extends the knowledge just applied or enriches their knowledge with additional topics. Usually, students just smile and nod, going about working on tasks for other classes. A few of my students though have been more engaged, pushing themselves to complete the required level work so they have more time to explore and try the honors material. In fact, I have shared with them the honors OneNote and OneDrive folder so they can independently review the material and track their progress and understanding through my posted keys. What stinks is they cannot "level up" at this point; our campus and district policies do not allow that during the school year, so they technically will not receive any additional credit or grade points for learning honors material. What is incredible though is witnessing the growth mindsets they have to choose to learn because learning and challenging oneself to go further is what really matters. This same experience happens for those students who historically have not been successful in a math class, except with the level content. For them, that is the chance to explore and try, push themselves to deepen their mathematical understanding, and finally feel success through hard work and effort. My activities are at different levels within a class and I assign them the one that meets their needs. If they finish, they know they can move to the next level activity to keep growing. At first, there is moaning and groaning because "I finished already!" but soon they realize that learning is never over, and they can build their confidence further and improve even more than before because they have established a background and foundation to build on. These experiences make me consider the lead versus lag measures too, which I have written about in my Big Picture Goals. Our culture is a now culture - instant gratification and we want to see results instantaneously. A growth mindset requires lag measures, reflecting back on where we started and the journey to where we are today, as well as being inspired to keep moving forward towards more transformational growth. Our students deserve the time investment to show and model what growth mindset looks like, sounds like, acts like, and feels like so they can carry it into their futures. I am realizing that I need a growth mindset on what growth mindset looks like for different people and different students. Meeting people where they are at and modeling for them how they can respond to grow is another way to positively impact lives. In the blink of an eye, my second term of my master’s is coming to a close. We just started the semester right? The accelerated program definitely feels accelerated… Fortunately, what is really working well has been maintaining the collaborative group I met this summer, but our approach to collaboration shifted once the school year started. Amanda, Hillary, Lindsay, and myself, along with Mikeela and Samantha, have drastically different schedules and family lives, so we found ourselves texting each other encouraging, and sometimes witty messages, as we struggled balancing all of the obligations of our jobs, our families, our Leading Organization Change class, as well as the Growth Mindset course. We found stability in dividing and conquering some of the reading, summarizing what we have read in a shared document, and providing feedback to blog posts and assignment pages when needed in Zoom meetings. Through our collaboration too, we often delegated who was the “leader” in that particular assignment or phase because we knew that week-to-week, someone would be a little less active in the collaboration due to other components of life… which includes…. when I got sick with the flu the first weekend of September and fell behind in my coursework. There were nights when the readings, assignments, videos and discussions were on the bottom of my list because it was necessary for me to take care of my physical well-being first. Part of the reason I became so quickly incapacitated was my struggle with time management. My body rapidly decided I need to stop for a moment. Balancing my different roles, such as campus Algebra 2 team leader, campus department leader, district national merit preparation program facilitator, along with wife, friend, daughter, was overwhelming but really I am partially to blame. My inner-procrastinator came out, and even though I know procrastination is a fight-or-flight response (check out this article from Psychology Today), this little bird wanted to desperately take flight. Recognizing where I have been and how far I have come in my journey, including my mental health journey, brought into perspective that we exist in ebbs and flows, and it is okay to be at a low as long as you do not settle there and dwell in the pit. Considering my why and how I want to be a butterfly, I did not let these setbacks stop me from moving forward one small step at a time. Even if I did not always participate in the discussion boards during the appropriate weeks, at least twice a week I go into the boards and read what others have written. I would reply when I feel as though my perspective would add value to the conversation or when I think words of affirmation or gratitude would support the growth of others. This rang true in our weekly class meetings and discussions, speaking up to engage in conversation, individually messaging people with ideas and feedback, etc. These intentional actions led me to consistently be one of the top contributors to the discussion boards and breakout rooms. This also established a routine for me of revising assignments or blog posts to incorporate my new learning and connections after revisiting discussions or other people’s ePortfolios. All of my posts and replies are very authentic and genuinely driven by my desire to connect with people and encourage others to do the same. Ironically, the only discussion board that I did not directly engage in was the networking discussion because I felt as though the list I would create would not be true to my actual engagement with them. The groups I engage with the most frequently are not necessarily formal because I do not have the capacity to devote any more time or energy into another thing that would only be done to satisfy an assignment requirement. Ultimately, the course on growth mindset has helped me see growth mindset in growth mindset... life and the whirlwind can take over but once the storm clears and the rainbow comes, we can keep moving forward together. While I did not reach my fullest potential, I would give myself a 95/100 to my contributions to learning in my Growth Mindset course. Now that I have experienced the beginning of the school year in addition to late nights completing my master’s program, I am back on track ready to keep learning, growing, improving, and being the best I can be each day. References Tarnowski, D. (2023, September 13). Instagram. Www.instagram.com. https://www.instagram.com/p/CxIuYEhuRul/?hl=en
We live in a culture that is so driven by instantaneous results or responses that waiting for a fraction of a second longer than a blink of an eye is too long. When you text someone, if they don't reply in a minute or two, SOMETHING MUST HAVE HAPPENED. When you place an order on Amazon, if it cannot arrive three minutes ago, THIS IS A NIGHTMARE. When you have a structured settlement and you need cash now, CALL J.G. WENTWORTH.
Let's consider weight loss or a fitness goal. When we have routines to try and watch our weight or be healthier, the small growths don't always feel significant, especially if the way we measure the progress measures pounds and not ounces, minutes and not seconds, miles and not feet. Having one goal maintains focus and we can determine the small actions that add up over time. It's really how we expect our students to act, right? We tell them to keep practicing skills and slowly but surely, they will make improvements, have light bulb moments, and get the confidence to aim for a bigger goal! Why don't we do the same in society? Working on my four disciplines of execution and coming up with a wildly important goal requires thinking about lead versus lag measures, what is actually measurable, and dedicating the time to follow through with accountability towards achieving this wildly important goal. Slow and steady will have to win the race in an instant world. Something I have learned through my role as a student and an educator in the education system is the word "yet" does not mean that I am on the cusp of a dramatic change or extreme growth in a short period of time but rather an opportunity to grow in almost a miniscule way in the moment, but those moments add up.
References
Wentworth, J. G. (2019, January 29). J.G. Wentworth | Opera Bus 2019 | :60. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bkORcziEx6g
I am still working on feedback though and my response to it. I accept all constructive feedback and prefer when people have suggestions or recommendations on how to proceed forward. Even prompting my thinking with questions helps. Typically though, others believe I am mad at them because I get upset, then the reality is I am upset with myself for not thinking of the ideas sooner.
This can be the same for our students. When a student has devoted a lot of time and energy from their perspective into solving a problem or completing a task, and then they get feedback on how to improve and adjust, their response is a reflection or deflection. When they reflect and understand intrinsically that it helps them learn and grow, the response comes out in a positive manner. When they deflect and the response comes out negatively, I am not sure it is because a student does not care, but they are building up a wall for some reason. Reflecting is uncomfortable, realizing that we could have been better in the past "if only we had done this before" is humbling, but our response to the feedback and having a growth mindset in which to receive and accept it makes it less uncomfortable. I tell students I ask they show their work so I can see their thinking... and then I add that usually if a student gets the wrong answer, it's not because they don't understand anything. It's because they maybe made an error in one small step. When we can identify those small places to improve, then it doesn't seem so daunting. This came from my 7th grade math teacher Mr. Fishpaw. He helped me realize that my errors came with switching positive and negative symbols every so often. Once I knew where my common mistake was, I could focus on that aspect and the rest would fall into place. Do I still make this mistake? Yes! Do I check over my work and take my time to check that I didn't make this common mistake of mine? Yes! Students often see wrong answers as complete failure but really it's small adjustments. When you are telling them what they did right, it removes that failure feeling and turns to small growth that adds up to big results. We should be intentional about leading students to this realization too... the destination always seems to be the emphasis, but really the journey is where we create lasting memories that impact our future. We get into a fixed mindset because we don't want to take risks... risk getting hurt, looking stupid, being judged negatively, etc. When others mess up, how often do we jump to give our "solutions" and think negatively? How awful does it feel when we are on the receiving end of this? There is not much more impactful than someone having grace when we mess up and acknowledge our human nature but then give us an opportunity to learn and grow. I say opportunity, because it is then up to us to seize it and produce the fruit of growth. Finding faith in feedback brings about belief in oneself to learn, grow, and improve every day.
Something I have learned through my role as a student (The Yet In Me - My Mindset Experience as a Student) and an educator in the education system is the word "yet" does not mean that I am on the cusp of a dramatic change or extreme growth in a short period of time but rather an opportunity to grow in almost a miniscule way in the moment, but those moments add up. I am still working on feedback though and my response to it. I accept all constructive feedback and prefer when people have suggestions or recommendations on how to proceed forward. Even prompting my thinking with questions helps. Typically though, others believe I am mad at them because I get upset, then the reality is I am upset with myself for not thinking of the ideas sooner.
This can be the same for our students. When a student has devoted a lot of time and energy from their perspective into solving a problem or completing a task, and then they get feedback on how to improve and adjust, their response is a reflection or deflection. When they reflect and understand intrinsically that it helps them learn and grow, the response comes out in a positive manner. When they deflect and the response comes out negatively, I am not sure it is because a student does not care, but they are building up a wall for some reason. Reflecting is uncomfortable. Realizing that we could have been better in the past "if only we had done this before" is humbling. Our response to the feedback and having a growth mindset in which to receive and accept it makes it less uncomfortable. The destination always seems to be the emphasis. The final grade, the diploma, the big promotion, all of these things are what we openly celebrate and praise. What if we focus more on the journey? Consider the space program and all of the failures that led up to the success. Neil Armstrong stepping onto the moon literally defined it as "one small step of a man" because that's actually all it was. The "one giant leap for mankind" encompasses all of the events that brought them to that moment. Through trial and error, through meticulous research and development, they learned when failures happened and how to adapt their understanding to build a rocket that takes people out of this world and onto the next. You could even consider Elon Musk and all that he is involved in with SpaceX. He can be viewed as genius or lunatic, but if we consider the great innovators of humanity, wouldn't we possibly classify them as either of those labels? They are ones who decided to ignore people limiting them and just try new things to see what happens. When the failure struck, the negative criticism did not stop them but rather encouraged them to try something else. We should consider the impact The Yet Mindset has as one small step for a student, one giant leap for education and the world. Let's get out of the world we are in and look towards the future.
References
NASA Video. (2013). One Small Step, One Giant Leap. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xSdHina-fTk
When looking at Bloom's Taxonomy, there's an intense focus in education on the cognitive domain. Did you know there are others?
Never in my wildest dreams would I find more information from, of all places, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Who would have thought, the Center of Disease Control has trainings on how to professionally develop adults! Understanding there is an affective domain in learning means if you really want to teach someone about something, you need to consider how they feel and their emotions. Feeding someone facts and only facts is not effective. Consider this: you can know you are smart but feel dumb. You can know you are beautiful but feel ugly. You can know you are valuable but feel worthless. Just because you know something to be true doesn't necessarily change how you feel 100% of the time, and how you feel usually dominates. My district has a great course on Brain States and Their Role in Behavior and it's where I first started to hear that it requires the highest executive function to think rationally and learn, especially when the emotional brain is in charge, but we can engage with the emotion to push someone into the cognitive state. Facts have to come with a match of the heart and the feeling behind it. This might be the reasoning for student's approach and mindsets to math. If a student is excited about learning a concept, they will take note of the facts behind the reasoning. If they are bored or do not know how it can truly deeply connect to something they are passionate about, they will consider math class a waste of time. Maybe targeting the mind is a recursive cycle... it is what others have done to try and convince us, so shouldn't we apply that to them? Oh this person gave me facts, I will give them facts... and they then give more facts because it's the same cycle from their perspective! It's about time we break this cycle, because we know there is the affective domain! Have you ever had someone say "I don't know how you do it" when you discuss your role? What if when we get this question, we share our why. It reminds me of the differences between elementary, middle, and high school teachers. I tell my sister-in-law all the time "I don't know how you do it" but I know her why as a PreK special education teacher. The same is true for my brother, who teaches high school agriculture classes. I don't understand how but I definitely know why. Our students and colleagues can sense whether or not we have a why and establishing and sharing our why (why not now?) will infuse the world around us with a sense of calling, purpose, and passion and encourage others to do the same. I hope as the new year starts, we need to consider how there is more than the cognitive domain in education. Building relationships with students, having empathy to their life experiences, and sharing our why so that they can learn takes root in the affective domain.
References
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (2018, March 28). PD201 - Domains of Learning. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N-ZEcFaqcoE&t=168s
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My husband lovingly teases me when I reflect on my day with him and say "I learned something new today!" because he would be surprised if I didn't learn something new.
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