I want to swim in the deep, murky waters of nuance when it comes to growth mindset. Maybe I need some lessons.

 Royan Lee This is how Royan Le finishes off his article on Growth Mindset.  It is a good place to finish a post on how we develop our own growth mindset.  This is something I am thinking about this year.  Our board has made this an important initiative this year for all of us and I know many school boards conducted studies and research on this last year. I think as teachers, we get into this profession because we believe in having a growth mindset.  I think it is a great focus for our school board.  I really like how Lee used the ‘How to Learn Math’ series by Jo Boaler in his post.  He is following the series and I am going to encourage our teachers to do the same thing. This will be a good series for me too – I actually said in a staff meeting ‘I never could teach math’ good start! For us, the challenge of growth mindset will be transferring this to our students and parents.  I know I have lots to learn about all of this, but my first thought is that we need to make sure our students believe in themselves.  They need to know that they can make a fundamental change in their living circumstances. One of my goals this year will be to have a growth mindset for myself, the staff, students and our parent community.  Where can we growth, where can we move to. We will try all sorts of projects to see if we can encourage a growth mindset – right now we are trying to redevelop our entire schoolyard.  It is a bit of a crazy idea, but it is capturing the imagination of our kids and teachers.  If you push hard enough, what can you achieve?

It doesn’t matter if we win this competition – although we would love your vote!  What matters is that we are trying new things to see what is possible, to see how we can grow and make a difference. Actually, we are doing OK, we are in 6th place nationally right now and are poised to enter the semi finals next week. Still, this will be a learning journey – I totally agree with Lee – I will need lots of lessons!