When it comes to learning and pursuing life’s goals, it’s the why that stands out as being the most important in comparison to the what or the how. I have to admit here, that before I started to read Carol Dweck's book, Mindset, I read an article by Alfie Kohn, “The “Mindset” Mindset: What We Miss By Focusing on Kids’ Attitudes” and it sort of skewed my thinking about growth mindset a bit. I’ve never thought about how praising students’ efforts is simply another way of manipulating them. In his article, Kohn mentions a lot of research and others’ points to prove that through all of the conjecture and evaluation of effort and its effects, no one is focusing on one’s engagement with tasks. While reading Dweck’s book, I found myself asking the question, “Well, if the person isn’t engaged and doesn’t care about the task at all, why would s/he care to put forth the effort?”
I believe that the Engagement piece in UDL and teachers taking on the role of a coach, coaching and supporting students actively using a growth mindset, is truly one of the most beneficial forms of academic learning. For example, building a classroom environment where teachers help students evaluate themselves like Eduardo Briceno’s explains in his Ted Talk, “How to Get Better at the Things You Care About”. Students should select their own goals while in the “learning zone”, performing self-selected practice and challenges that they can later apply to the “performance zone”. It’s the students who need to select the growth that they wish to see and opportunities for engagement and meaningful learning needs to be at the forefront of lesson planning.
When I evaluate myself, I find that I have a growth mindset. In the times where my mindset might be labeled as fixed, it has more to do with my engagement piece more than me thinking that I can’t do something or get better at it. If I don’t care and I don’t have a vested interest in the task, why should I care or put forth the effort? It’s really not worth my time. And isn’t this exactly what my students are thinking when I lay a task before them and they, too, don’t find meaning in the learning and don’t become engaged?
This leads me to my wildly important goal which doesn’t necessarily focus on technology integration, although technology is certainly a large part of it. Building the classroom environment that I’ve described is difficult to do with 200 students (40 per period - 50 minutes). The confines and structure of the day make it difficult to coach students individually. It is because of this that I am in this program. I see myself using technology integration to help me coach kids using UDL while teaching a growth mindset. This DLL program is part of the path I’m taking to the kind of teaching that I’d like to practice.
Briceño, E. (2016, November). How to get better at the things you care about. Retrieved
November 28, 2018, from
https://www.ted.com/talks/eduardo_briceno_how_to_get_better_at_the_things_you_care_about?language=en
Dweck, C. S. (2016). Mindset: The new psychology of success. New York: Ballantine Books.
Kohn, A. (2015, August 16). The "Mindset" Mindset. Retrieved November 23, 2018, from https://www.alfiekohn.org/article/mindset/
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