Growth Mindset

I found these Growth Mindset ideas to be great, and I completely agree with Carol. I don't think that it is good that we award kids for every little thing they do right instead of rewarding them when something is difficult and they overcome that difficulty. For instance, I think the whole participation trophy thing is ridiculous, and I always have. I grew up playing baseball, and I never once cared about the trophies we got at the end of each season because I knew that my team did not really win anything at all. However I did care a lot when I would put in hard work all season and was then chosen to be on the All Star team, because I had deserved that. I agree with Carol in that we should not be rewarding and praising people for every right thing they do, but rather praising them for going through the process of growth.

One thing I found interesting in this video was her idea of not being OK with kids doing well at things that come easy to them, but rather giving them harder work until they do feel challenged. School was always very easy for me growing up, I would finish my work before everyone else and spend the rest of class screwing around because I was bored. I wished that my schools would have noticed that I wasn't being challenged enough, and had the foresight to challenge me a little more. Because I was never really challenged in grade school, I didn't really learn anything that I didn't already know, and because of that I feel like I wasted the first nine years of my educational journey. It wasn't until I got into AP classes in high school that I actually felt challenged, but I don't think I was adequately prepared to handle having to actually put in work to understand something, and that is why I always kind of just did the minimum amount of work I had to do to pass. I wasn't groomed from a young age to work hard at school, and it has made my journey through high school and college much more difficult in the long run.

I am lucky that I grew up playing sports though, because that has made me welcome physical challenges and realize that it is that challenge that causes you to grow stronger. I think that people are so afraid of failure now-a-days, that they never really try their hardest. Failure should be something that is embraced with open arms, because it is through your failures that you grow, not your successes. Like Carol said, if you're doing something easy, that is because you already know how to do it. I definitely think that Growth Mindset should be taught to everyone at a young age in school. I like the idea of focusing on the yet instead of the now. I think we all should be very aware that, in every aspect of life, growth is a long, hard process that will be filled with many peaks and valleys, and that we should not put that much stock into either of them. That's not to say we should celebrate our successes, but I just think we should focus more on the road to success and what you went through to get it, rather than just the moment in itself.

I really enjoyed these videos, and I would definitely like to learn more about Growth Mindset and focusing on how to get better at things than I was the day before.