Hello Everyone!
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Puppy Sitting for my Boss!
Katic, K. (Summer, 2016). Rosedale.
Left to Right: Hooch, Flower, and Stone. |
Can you believe that we're almost at the half way point of September? It's hard for me to believe that autumn is almost here, it feels like summer was just yesterday! As the pace continues to increase during this school year, I will constantly be stressing the importance of finding the small things in life to keep your mind at ease. It's so easy to get overwhelmed and stressed with our schooling, and those small things help to keep us in check. As I have said before, I love being outside, weight-training and yoga, but I am also a huge animal lover! For me, the perfect break from getting overwhelmed with school this weekend was to have dinner with my boss and our significant others. Her Great Dane puppy Stone just turned 6 months, and he is just the sweetest boy (you can see him in the picture above from when I was puppy sitting in the summer). He always makes sure to give great sloppy kisses when I'm feeling a bit stressed out, so remember the small, simple pleasures and this will ensure that you get through your school year with minimal stress and great success!
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Screenshots of Videos from Week 2.
Left to Right: Mindset, Messages About Math, Messages About You. |
This week, there were many concepts from class that I found to be great! They really challenged my thinking and I truly believe that it has changed my mentality about math. All three of the videos that had to be watched on the Online Module really affected how I viewed math and the mentality that I have about it. The three modules this week discussed
Mindset,
Messages About Math, and
Messages About You. I have set up the links for each video for easy viewing. While there were many great take-away's from all of these videos, I have narrowed down two important things that each teacher should know.
The first is the importance of
maintaining a growth mindset as opposed to a fixed mindset. A growth mindset believes that you can succeed and increase your intelligence with hard work, practice and dedication. It has been proven that having a fixed mindset, the belief that someone is intelligent or not and no matter the amount of work intelligence cannot increase, it truly detrimental to our students and ourselves; this limits the potential for success in every area of our lives! By maintaining a growth mindset and constantly challenging ourselves, great things will happen! The second take-away is that we
must encourage our students with positive feedback and ensure they know that we believe they can succeed in order for them to achieve at the highest levels possible. As teachers, we must avoid using phrases such as "smart" to describe students as this has been proven to lead to a fixed mindset due to those "smart students" being fearful of failure. Instead, we must use words of praise such as "great job for working so hard, I believe in you!". These types of encouraging words will lead to students trying harder and great success!
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Studying for my Stats Exam, Year 2 at McMaster.
Horsley, S. (April 25, 2013). Hamilton. |
From my own personal experience, I have had both growth and fixed mindsets, as well as teachers who really didn't believe in me as a student. I have had growth mindsets with every area of my life, with the exception of math. I constantly got frustrated because I really didn't understand the material, and yet by constantly having negative feelings internally I discouraged and hindered myself. Here's a (really embarrassing) throwback picture that my friend took when I was extremely frustrated during exams. She took this picture for me to look back on when I was finished my exam and feel that overwhelming rush of relief...but it didn't happen that way; my math problems followed me all the way to my Undergrad when a Statistics Course was mandatory, which was this exam I was studying for. I truly thought that I was going to fail, I ended up passing my course but not with the grade I wanted. If I had only adopted this growth mindset mentality, then maybe I could have done better. However, with a Professor who really didn't care about the students and with not understanding certain concepts and having my friends say, "It's easy what don't you understand about it?', it was very discouraging. Therefore, with my own personal experiences I have had with math, I will do everything in my power as an educator to ensure my student's success with positive words of encouragement and constantly enforcing a growth mindset.
I hope that you have enjoyed reading this post, and I hope that I have offered some insight about how we can further improve our math classrooms. If you have any comments or questions please feel free to post below, and remember, enjoy the small things that breath life into all of your passions and endeavours! "Be fearless in pursuit of what sets your soul on fire". Feel free to post any questions or comments below!
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Glute Bridges Personal Record!
Katic, K. (September, 2016). Lindsay. |
References
Sue, D. (July 20, 2016). Week 2a: Mindset. Retrieved From https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fuf1LzY5thM&feature=youtu.be
Sue, D. (July 20, 2016). Lesson+2b: Messages About Math. Retrieved From https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cuFHBwAgqjU&feature=youtu.be
Sue, D. (July 20, 2016). Lesson+2c: Messages About You. Retrieved From https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_9q0paQoZa8&feature=youtu.be
Photos
Horsley, S. (April 25, 2013). Studying for my Stats Exam, Year 2 at McMaster.© Hamilton.
Katic, K. (Summer, 2016). Puppy Sitting for my Boss!© Rosedale. Left to Right: Hooch, Flower, and Stone.
Katic, K. (September, 2016). Glute Bridges Personal Record.© Lindsay. Editing Tools: Photos on MacBook Air, PDF annotator, and http://www.quickpicturetools.com/en/blur_edges/
Hi Kathlene,
ReplyDeleteI love that you included that picture of those adorable pups!! How can you not be happy when you are surrounded by those faces!
I really enjoyed reading your post and seeing the connections you made to your own personal experiences with math. I also appreciated your honesty of having both growth and fixed mindsets. I can also relate to your experiences of frustrations with math and feeling defeated by the material. I wonder with the information we know now, do you think your experiences would have been different if you had an educator(s) support a growth mindset? I remember one of my teachers in high school positively reinforced my hard work and would tell me that they “knew I could do it”. Although I had this positive influence in math, I would still become frustrated or feel defeated with how long and how hard I would have to work to actually understand the math. How would you positively reinforce a child that worked excessively hard on math, made mistakes but would eventually stop trying because they would still have feelings of defeat?
Hello Kathlene,
ReplyDeleteI really enjoyed reading this week's post. I have to admit, I too, am shocked at how quickly this year is passing by! Aside from that comment, I have to agree with the idea on how important it is to provide students with positive reinforcement. We need to encourage them more to show that not only are we seeing them succeed and grow while learning math, but that they are growing because they understand the material being taught. I also agree that you need to have a growth mindset for the students that neeed the encouragement so you have the thoughts that help reinforce positive.
Hello Kathlene,
ReplyDeleteI enjoy how you incorporate your personal experiences into the lessons from each week! It's easier to see how the information is applicable in the classroom when you talk about it from the student perspective. I'm glad that you were able to overcome challenges that you had with math, which I hope you will share with your students. It will make you more relatable and approachable as a teacher, because you understand how frustrating math can be. I think it's great that you have persevered through these obstacles it's awesome to see how far you've come! I think if you continue to challenge yourself, you will be a great inspiration to your students.