Week 1: Growth Mindset

I liked the idea of growth mind set. However, I feel like it is too good to be true. When I was growing up, in my school system if you got anything beyond a C, it is considered as failing. If you fail one class instead of re –taking that one subject, you have to repeat the same grade. So many children was held back several grades because of this system. A common pattern one can notice is that, these kids kept failing and even when they passed, they did not do well in class. Most of the time these students also get in trouble for talking or being distracted in class. One time, in 6^th grade one of our teacher called on one of my friend who kept failing classes, unlike other teacher who scolded her for her under achievement, she praised her efforts and told her that she will expect to see more effort on the next quiz. She didn’t even mention grade like other teachers. On the next quiz she received a ninety percent. The same teacher called her in again and told her that she was very pleased with her. She ended up scoring the highest for that subject on the next exam in our class.  She started improving so much. When she reached 8^th grade, she started doing so much better and at least receive eighty percent in all the subjects.  This one teacher made a lot of difference in her life by praising her efforts and not putting so much pressure on grades. However, unless we have people like this teacher, growth mind set idea will just remain an idea. I have never heard about Carol Dweck before this video. When she started talking about it, I realized what our teacher did was praising the effort and not focusing on the grade as much as other teachers have done. The same teacher was also a positive influence in my life. I am planning on using this growth mind set beyond class room. I am going try to use it my personal relationships and my work. 

Growth mindset

I really liked this picture because after I came to united states, everything was easy for me, I stopped trying and when I started taking harder classes, I kept my pattern of not trying, which lead to a downfall. Instead of making things easy, students need to be taught how to work hard.