Growth Mindset In the Classroom

Sometimes I look back at my first three years of teaching, when I was teaching all four levels of English to 80-90 students, and I shake my head. I had no idea what I was doing and I wish I could have a do-over in so many ways with those kids. The students I had during those years have repeatedly told me that they really did learn a lot from me and that they enjoyed having me as a teacher, but with everything that I have learned over 24 years of education, I know that I could have accomplished so much more if I knew then what I know now.

But that is part of teaching. It is not an exact science and we are constantly learning and growing as we find new ways to teach the same material to our kids, and sometimes new ways to present new material to our kids. I probably spend way too much time during the school year paying attention to what my colleagues across the country are posting on the AP or yearbook Facebook forums, but the ideas that I have seen from other teachers and that I have taken and adjusted to work for my classroom have made me a better teacher. Going to the AP Reading made me a better teacher because I got to spend an entire week sitting at a table and breakfast and lunch and dinner talking to teachers who all have the same goal: quality education for their students.

When I have a growth mindset, I'm willing to try something new, and if it doesn't work figure out why and decide whether I need to just never do it again or figure out a way to do it better. I also have to be willing to let my students make mistakes, learn from them, and try again. Below are the ways that I have implemented a growth mindset in my classroom with my students.

Semester Portfolios and Cumulative Projects

I love using semester projects and portfolios to assess student learning. It combines additional learning for my students and allows me to pick certain skills that I want them to demonstrate mastery of at the same time. Below are the projects that I have assigned in the last couple years that assessed semester and year-long learning.

• English 2 PAP Memoir Project

• English 2 PAP End of Year Portfolio

• AP Literature 1st and 2nd Semester Independent Projects

English 2 PAP Memoir Project

English 2 PAP Writing Portfolio

AP Literature and Composition 1st and 2nd Semester Final Projects

Research Paper

One of the biggest changes I had to force myself to make with growth mindset was how I taught the research process, and it completely changed the way I teach overall. In the past, I did the process, but I took points off  for every little writing infraction and if they did it incorrectly I just told them to do it correctly next time. Not surprisingly, things never changed. Kids would go back to their desks doing what they had always done and I got frustrated because their final drafts were still a mess without proper citations, without works cited pages, and with multiple easily correctable mistakes throughout their papers. I finally decided that enough was enough; if a student didn't do something correctly early on in the writing process I was sending them back to their desk to do it correctly until I got what I was looking for. It didn't matter if it was something small like a misplaced piece of punctuation or something major like a lack of a thesis statement and introductory paragraph. I decided to be their guide instead of an enforcer of the writing rules. I could enforce the rules down the road once they learned the process.

The result? Teaching research became fun. Personally I love doing research, and taking the time (and it is time consuming) to break down every little part of the process and to make sure that kids are doing it right, is exhausting but worth it. I'm sure there are people who walk into my classroom during the research paper and wonder why there are so many kids just sitting around working on their computers while I may be talking to one or two students at a time, but I know what is happening. The kids are learning and the end results, while not perfect, have proven to be significantly better than earlier in my teaching career. While this was a mindset shift for me, it is a shift for my students as well because they hate having to go back and fix every little mistake before they get credit. But I've learned that it is worth the work and most of my students would agree with me.

English 2 PAP Research Project

AP Language/Dual Credit 1301 Book Argument Analysis Research Paper

AP Language/Dual Credit 1302 Social Change Research Project