Week 6 Growth Mindset

For this week's growth mindset challenge, I decided to learn more about growth  mindset with the links provided. I read an article called Creativity in the Classroom, and it was about how a teacher had incorporated growth mindset themes into his classroom. He had three techniques to encourage creativity among his students: open-ended projects, genius hour, and creative team building. Open-ended projects are self-explanatory. The teacher designed projects that allowed the students more freedom with the project instead of following a strict rubric. In his example, the teacher used presentations as his open-ended project, and the students chose what type of presentation (video, poster, class activity etc.). Creative team building is about solving complex problems with a group, however, the problems aren't your average math equations. The teacher gave his students marshmallows, pasta sticks, and tape, and asked them to create the tallest free-standing tower. Anything that deals with marshmallows, count me in! My favorite technique was the genius hour. For an hour a day or once a week, the teacher permitted his students to use classroom resources to research their passion. The students become so engaged in their genius hour, that they don't realize that they're doing homework! I like the idea of genius hour because it gives kids an opportunity to discover their passion, and perhaps, maybe even find a career that interests them at a deeper level. I really admire this teacher for investing so much of his time and resources to encourage creativity in his students. Nowadays, school curriculum focuses mainly on passing standardized exams and maintaining a high GPA. How can anyone be creative when students are taught to think the same? Study this book. Pass the test. Move forward. Does a score on an exam really define an individual? Why must we quantify everything? Several questions popped into my head as I read the article, but my main question is why aren't more educators teaching growth mindset?

Be open to new perspectives. Source.