Week 17 Growth Mindset

I know that I am supposed to do one of the activities on the blog for Growth Mindset, but I instead just what to discuss the concept and what it means to me one last time this semester. First off I want to say that I think it is awesome that this course teaches us about growth mindset and the power of believing that you can get better at anything you put your mind to. This way of thinking is so important, especially to young students and it blows my mind that I have never heard of it until this semester. It instantly made so much sense to me, because I could see how this idea would have helped me so much throughout my academic journey. I have already shared this but I want to discuss it one more time, throughout elementary and middle school I put pretty much all of my academic focus onto math, since I knew I was already good at it when most other kids weren't, and that is where I could gain gratification and appreciation for doing good work. Because I was so good at this one subject and the others did not come easy to me I decided to just focus on math. Looking back, I wish I could have instilled what I know now about growth mindset into that young man that I was back then, because I should have been focusing more on the things that came difficult to me so that I could know how to overcome obstacles better in every facet of life. Me focusing only on things I could easily do made my life very difficult when I got to AP classes in high school and college courses, because there were going to be a lot of things that I was not good at that I would have to put a lot of focus into, and since I had no practice doing this it made my life much more difficult than it had to be. This is why I think ALL young children should be taught how to put the time and work in to accomplish something that is difficult at a young age. I am lucky that I had good teachers that instilled this kind of thinking in me later in life, because without growth mindset and enjoying things that are hard for me to accomplish I would never accomplish anything. I am so good at my job because I now LOVE learning new things and new ways to accomplish tasks. It is such an important idea, growth mindset, and I would like to thank this course for introducing this thought into my life and giving it a name, I will do my best to share this kind of thinking with my own children at a young age and anyone else who will listen and is receptive to it.