Carol Dweck’s concept of “growth mindset” helps me frame my thinking about learning and motivation, in simple terms, in a positive way. I will begin with a fact about myself: I am very school orientated and spend a lot of time focusing on my grades and what score I will get on my next test. After watching this video and our class discussion, however, I am starting to view school in a different way; I am starting to see that it is important for me to have a mindset which allows me to strive to learn the most, not get the best grade. Having a growth mindset allows me to have the opportunity to improve my grades as well, but more importantly it shows me that if I spend time challenging myself and trying new things, I will become more successful over time. If my grades do not reflect this, it does not mean I have not made progress. I think knowing this will help me work to try things out of my comfort zone, which I do not do very often, and create more difficult goals for myself. I know that these goals I will create I will be able to achieve because from now on I would like to create a framework of thinking for myself where “yet” is the key word. An example of this includes “I can’t do this yet.” Having this mindset will help me become more of the person I have always wanted to be. Another important idea that I think, after hearing this video and participating in class discussion, is something I would like to improve on is listening to and accepting critiques about my work. I think I need to focus more on learning from critiques and using them to help make me a better person and improve my quality of work. One last important idea is that having a growth mindset allows you to form better connections and relationships with family and friends. These relationships are very important to me, and now that I have found a way to improve them, I am excited to become closer with my friends and family. Overall, I think working on these things will push me to become more creative, more willing to try new things, and improve my schoolwork and relationships with friends and family. I will be able to be more successful and prouder of my work in and outside of college, along with forming deeper connections with the people I am closest to. Having this mindset will encourage me to work hard in order to achieve my goals now and any future goals I will have.

In order to understand and embrace this idea of having a “growth mindset,” I will find ways to show students that I work with what that mindset is and how they can incorporate it into their lives. Any students that I work with that are struggling, I hope to set them up and create opportunities of success for them so they feel that they are accomplishing something in the classroom and should continue to work and try new things. I will find ways that I can challenge them to show them that it is okay to make mistakes and fail.; they should use these mistakes to improve themselves and their work. If there are students who are worried about their grades, I will help teach them how to create a framework of thinking that is based around the idea of “yet,” and I will tell them that this mindset can help lead to more success in the gradebook. I think it is important to start teaching students this early on so that they use it in their lives as they grow up. It is also important for them to know that they can and should have a growth mindset outside of school; and that it is not something that happens overnight. I hope to make an impact on the students I am going to be working with so that they challenge themselves, create work that is better quality, and have confidence in themselves and their work. I also think that helping students develop a growth mindset will help me in developing my own. Showing others what it is like and how it can impact you to have this mindset will hopefully help me realize that it is important to have this mindset in order for me to have the positive, happy life that I want.