Sunday, January 17, 2016

Growth Mindset: The Power of Believing That You Can Improve

I was so excited when I saw that we got to watch a TED talk for our assignment this week! I think TED talks are both extremely fascinating and educational. I thought that “The Power of Believing That You Can Improve” by Carol Dweck was very interesting as well as eye opening. Dweck discussed the “power of yet” and children’s “growth mindset.”

After watching this TED talk, I started thinking about modern day education. I 100 percent agree with Dweck when she discusses how kids want the “tyranny of now.” I believe that our society has made kids dislike challenges and problems.

I loved how Dweck described struggling as “your brain getting smarter.” I think that our schools today need to push this concept and show kids that it is good to work hard! I think this concept needs to be pushed in all levels of school (even in college).


After looking through some of the Growth Mindset Challenges, I found myself getting really excited to start these activities! Last semester, I tried to set aside one hour everyday to try something new or different in my life. I feel that our Growth Mindset Challenges can help me continue my “hour power” and challenge myself on a whole new level!


5 comments:

  1. Your "hour power" sounds PERFECT for the growth mindset and other kinds of challenges you can explore for this class, Matty! Fantastic! Maybe you will find new challenges you want to try and/or you can share the challenges you have set for yourself and report on how they are going. There are some other good TED talks about growth mindset, embracing mistakes, etc., and there are lots of TED talks that I've bookmarked for the learning challenges part of the class also. This is a part of the class where I get to learn so much from following along to see what people want to do with the challenges; it inspires me to try new things too!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Hi sweet Matty! I completely agree with you that our society does not motivate children to challenge themselves and work through their problems! I do think schools should push it more and definitely professors and university officials should push it more in college because that is how real life works. I hope that the growth mindset challenges serve you well the rest of the semester and I hope your “hour power” is also going well!

    ReplyDelete
  3. Hi Matty! I completely agree that we need to approach struggling in school as a positive thing! I always try to explain it by saying it is the same as being really tired after running or playing a sport. That tiredness means you are pushing yourself and getting better! Good luck on your "hour power" I hope you have kept it up and it is going well. If not, I hope this is a reminder to get it going again!

    ReplyDelete
  4. Hey, Matty!

    Yes, I do agree that children need to understand and truly grasp that education is so vital. Not only do the children need to be aware, but so do their parents. You can’t choose a random day when theyre in middle school to try to force the importance of learning on the child. It literally starts when the child is born. So yes, great idea to implement that the brain can grow and that there is no limit to what can be learned.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Hi Matty, I think that you are totally right that our society has made kids dislike challenges and problems. I think our generation is so lazy compared to the generations that came before us. I think the next step for our generation is to realize that we can't be good at everything but with a little practice and hard work that we can do anything that we set our minds to do!

    ReplyDelete