I feel like I see the growth mindset in action on a daily basis. In a language acquisition context, we talk about how pushing yourself out of your comfort zone and seeking out challenges to test yourself are necessary for success. I've seen students come in every day during a semester to practice their pronunciation or check out books to read in other languages, and in the short time from the beginning of a semester to the end, the amount of progress is really impressive.
I hope as this class continues on, I'll be able to participate in more and more of the Growth mindset challenges. I really want to make my last semester a memorable one, and I hope to get as much out of it as I can. It's really easy to let stress bog you down and make everything seem impossible, but to me, the growth mindset is almost cathartic in a way: if you can't succeed at first, you WILL be able to stretch and push yourself to meet the challenge eventually. That's a really comforting message for a lot of people.
Hello Jacob Henry! I agree with your post on growth mindset. It is basically just a different mindset to have when approaching a problem. If you change your perspective on a challenge to a positive one then you will perform better because you do not view it as a chore. I also enjoyed the two videos you posted on growth mindset.
ReplyDeleteJacob,
ReplyDeleteI thought it was really neat that you applied the growth mindset philosophy to language. It's hard to learn a new language when you don't push yourself to overcome embarrassment and shyness. Spanish was my first language, but my father always spoke to me in English so I lost a lot of it when I grew up. I didn't want to lose my culture so I learned how to read and write in Spanish in elementary and middle school. Sometimes, I'll trip up on a word and my cousins will laugh at me which makes me not want to speak Spanish. But when I practice, I can sound like a native speaker. Discouragement really takes a toll on people, at least it does to me. For anyone who is learning a new language, always practice and don't mind the people who laugh at you. As the Sesame Street video said, you're just not there YET!