Tuesday, July 11, 2017

Art and the Growth Mindset

"Ms. D, that's too hard!" "I can't do it like you" "I'll never be good at art!"

These are definitely not all of the "fixed mindset" phrases that I hear in a day in my art classroom but they are the ones that I will always remember . Each time it breaks my heart as I try to find the words to encourage my students to continue their work and techniques that I teach them all year long. Unfortunately, in an ideal world, I can encourage ALL students and show them that mistakes are life's way of saying "you're on the right track, you're just not there yet".

As I sat one summer afternoon, enjoying my summer vacation as all teachers do, with my coffee in hand and light music playing in the background, I can hear my two dogs dreaming on the couch. This is not to say that I don't enjoy learning all year long. Summer is my time to recharge, research and review all of the ways that I can improve for the following school year. Research has become a sort of friend/foe since graduate school.

Research does one of two things for me..either it stifles my thought process and I have to take a break, eventually losing interest in the subject or it does the opposite. I love watching TedTalks because they not only are informative but they always seem to spark ideas that I can tend to obsess over and eventually demonstrate in life and in the classroom.  On this particular day, I watched a TedTalk by "Grow Mindset" guru, Carol Dweck. For years, she has been studying in various school settings around the country on how retraining the mind to have a "growth mindset" approach in learning as well as teaching styles can help students not only make the passing grade, but also teach them life long skills in how they deal with success and failure as adults. I'd like to begin my record of my "Adventures in Teaching Growth Mindset"! Experiment time, here we go!

Here is Carol Dweck's TedTalk:
https://www.ted.com/talks/carol_dweck_the_power_of_believing_that_you_can_improve

Her book: Mindset: The new psychology of success, 2007

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