Tag Archives: Growth Mindset

Growing with a Student Teacher

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First off, I have to say I won the student teacher lottery.  My student teacher @ochoajon8 came into his summative experience ready to take over his own classroom.  I discovered that all of my self preparation to have difficult conversations was completely unnecessary and I needed to think completely differently about this process. Here’s what we’ve come up with.

I observe Jon formally 1-2 classes per day in a shared Evernote notebook so he has my notes to augment his own on how the class went.  I format my feedback with these three headings:

  1. Lesson notes – this includes word choice, general observations (positive and things to improve)
  2. Reflective Questions – These are questions designed to get him to think about things that we need to think about.  Some have been about our planning process, some have been thinking about the very positive things that are happening and how to make them happen more often.
  3. I notice you’re improving on… – What has made Jon so great is that his reflective practice is already well established.  He shares his own personal growth goals with me and I let him know where I’m seeing growth.  He’s great at self monitoring, but a second set of eyes is always a good thing.

 

Keeping all of this in a shared notebook in Evernote has turned this process into a two way dialogue about how the day went.  It was difficult to talk about the specifics of the day before I started taking detailed notes and sharing through Evernote.  In addition, the time constraints of our day made it difficult to plan and have the conversations we needed to have.  Seeing his fresh perspective in his responses to my feedback has turned this into an extremely symbiotic relationship.

 

How have you framed your formal relationship with your student teachers?

What ways can we improve this process for the good of all?

 

When possessing a growth mindset turns into a handicap

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I love the students in my class.  I also understand that I have a relatively narrow perspective of the education system.  My k-12 education came from a suburban district with high achievement, I went to college within 10 miles of my hometown, and I now teach in a district within 10 miles of my hometown and college.  I feel comfortable with the knowledge I possess and I believe that I’m working hard at becoming an excellent educator – however I also realize that with my narrow experience I must be missing something.  My solution?  Reading, twitter, and anything else I can get my hands on to increase my student’s growth and love for school.  Everything that fits within my schema gets incorporated into my daily teaching.

I had a particularly powerful experience at MACUL when Kevin Honeycutt was talking about creating students who are producers rather than consumers.  To me this means that as a teacher I need to be a producer and role model for my students.  As a musician I immediately went back to composing my own songs (like students do in my classes) and sharing them with my students.  I was really proud until I realized this wasn’t really me creating in my field.  My field is education.  I’m a consumer.  My dilemma comes from my insatiable appetite for new information – transformative information.  It seems like almost every book I read, video I watch, or blog I follow I pick things up that I think “how did I live without this” or more importantly “how was I teaching without this”.  How can I produce when I know next month I’m going to read something that is going to make my next iteration of thinking so much better than my current thinking?

I’m creating this blog to begin my journey into becoming a producer.  I’ve been a consumer and I want to begin to add to the conversation in a meaningful way.  I need to in order to become the role model my students deserve.