GROWTH MINDSET

One of those weeks…

I’ll be honest- this past week at school was ROUGH! And you’d better believe I was happy it only lasted four days.

There’s something that changes in the air when you start off the week on a Tuesday instead of a Monday. Everything seems lighter and more hopeful. Until you get to school and discover that the kids are all squirmier than usual and are ready for the weekend already. There’s just something about those three-day weekends. But I think a big part of why last week was so hard was because I stepped up to the bat and taught a few of my very first classes. And two of them were violin classes. For first graders. Lord help us all!

Yes, as part of the progression of the amount of our involvement in the classroom, we should be taking on 25% of the teaching load at this point. I think that because all of us rotated around to various schools in order to get a better sense of the educational environment in Juneau and to figure out our schedules, I did not feel quite at home at Glacier Valley yet and wasn’t feeling super ready to take on the task of leading the kids last week. But I am really proud of myself for still doing it!

I taught my first grade class the violin on Tuesday and Friday mornings last week. Tuesday was rather terrifying, and Friday just felt a little chaotic (both internally and externally!). I’ll share a little secret with you: I played the violin for the first time on Tuesday, right before class! So needless to say, I’m not super refined in my playing technique. But the lesson plan was simple enough: we were supposed to review their bow holds and teach them the fingerings to their first song, which was a familiar one. I went through the plan in my head multiple times before the actual day, as we had all met as a group on Monday to discuss our plans for the week and divide up the classes. But then I realized something: my ability to remember things (really anything- names, including mine, maybe lesson plans…hypothetically...) pretty much goes out the window when I’m in front of a group of 20 little kids. So I found myself looking at my “cheat sheet” I had printed out way too often on Tuesday, and it just did not flow. I didn’t feel confident or comfortable, and I think the kids felt confused about what they were supposed to be doing or how they were supposed to be feeling about that. Needless to say, I was very relieved the moment class ended in all its chaos, and I also felt super discouraged. Granted, that was my first classroom teaching experience of a subject that is still brand new to me, but I just thought it would have gone way smoother! And I have realized since then that I really love and thrive with small group interactions- one-on-one or one-on-five, maybe. But teaching a large class is completely foreign territory, and it scares me so much! So I went home on Tuesday feeling all those fun things and asking myself some thrilling, delightful questions: What am I doing?! Can I actually do this? Is it time to go to bed yet and end this day?

But you know what...I just got up on Wednesday and decided to keep going. So for one of our classes that we went through early on in the program, we were assigned to read a book about this idea of a “growth mindset”, as opposed to a fixed one. As I was reading it, the gist I got from it was that I totally have a fixed mindset in the areas of learning and education, and that was really bad. And then the author drove that point home numerous times. And then added more stories about why that was so bad. Okay, I get it- I have problems! But now that I know how to recognize a fixed mindset, I have actually seen myself change a lot! The guilting, dramatic stories actually worked! A fixed mindset learner believes that his or her intelligence is completely defined by how quickly and naturally they understand things. These people feel that they need to prove their level of intelligence often, and if they have to try hard to do it, it must mean they are not smart after all. They tend to avoid new, scary things (hmm what’s super scary that I did last week…?) because they are afraid they will make mistakes and therefore be “average” or won’t hit the mark. Does this ring any bells for anyone else, or is it just me?! So jumping into a totally new subject this year and putting myself in front of large groups of kids as I lead them through lesson plans I had never known how to make before is very new to me, and sometimes that is really hard for me to accept. I don’t like taking risks and feeling “not good” at something, honestly! I don’t like having to get back up after I feel that I have failed (which is definitely how I felt on Tuesday), but I literally coached myself on the days leading up to Friday that I could DO this and that I just needed to have the growth mindset and allow myself to learn something new, even though I can’t do that very gracefully! And while the class on Friday still didn’t go entirely smoothly, I think that I jumped significant levels (as Lorrie would say!) between Tuesday and then. My goal as I walked into that violin class with those same students was to at least work on one thing that didn’t go well on Tuesday and go from there. And my other goal every time I interact with students is to show them deep care, love, and acceptance. Check!

Something that encouraged me in between those two classes was the xylophone class I taught to fifth graders in the middle of the week! That was another subject that was foreign to me, and the class was even larger, but I went into it trying to have as open a mind as possible and decided to leave the “cheat sheet” that I had so desperately clung to on Tuesday behind. :) And you know what? It went pretty well! There were some curve balls thrown at me- we had forgotten that they were a lesson behind, so instead of doing the activity we had planned together, I needed to introduce the technique of playing the xylophone and do a different game with them- but that’s the life of a teacher, as I am discovering. The activity we ended up doing involved choosing a “conductor” from the class to lead us on our xylophones. And no matter how anything else went in that class and even though my face was red and it felt like I was experiencing menopausal hot flashes, I was proud of myself for one thing: one of the students who tends to be disengaged during class and even attempts to get others off task actually paid attention and ENJOYED HIMSELF!! Victory! I had placed myself directly next to him in the circle we had formed, and as I explained the game we were going to do to the class, he turned to me and asked if he could be one of those chosen conductors. And I simply said, “If you are being a leader, are participating, and are sitting up straight, yes!”. And he immediately sat straight up and smiled, hope filling in his eyes. I kept my eye on him as we went about learning how to play the xylophone, and he was such a model student. He was my first one chosen, and as he led the class with his movements in the center of the circle, I saw his whole face change into something I had never seen before: a genuine smile. He seriously looked like a different child! And it was so amazing to watch. He loved it, and all of us teachers were gawking about it afterward. It still warms my heart; that’s what I’m here to do! So that was a GREAT pick-me-up and definitely encouraged me to stick with it and keep going with that lovely growth mindset I am learning to exercise.

Doing a team-building activity during JAMM!

So it was a difficult first week of teaching, and it gave me plenty of new things to learn, but the biggest thing I learned was how gracious I need to be with myself! It was my first week doing that, and the kids really were squirmy worms in that first grade class. So, yay for learning and growing! But man, was I glad when the weekend came! And I started it off by having a giant workday on Saturday and got all my homework done for the week! My online classes have finally started up, and one of them meets regularly for two hours every Thursday. We mostly talked about the syllabus, but our teacher also asked us how things have been going. It was actually nice to hear that I wasn’t the only one struggling last week. As one classmate put it, he was in survival mode- as in, “dropped in the middle of the Alaskan wilderness when it’s 40 degrees below, survival mode,” or something to that effect! HAHA. Some people (including him) are super funny in my class, and they type hilarious commentary in the class chat box as the teacher is talking! But also, after a long week of doing something new and hard for me, it was actually comforting to begin something very familiar to me and something I knew I was good at- schoolwork! So my Saturday workday was actually enjoyable...I’m a weirdo. One of my assignments was to actually write out my teaching philosophy, which was a good way to wrap up the week and reflect on why I am actually putting myself through this challenging year!

Once I got my work done, I rewarded myself with a little socializing time and went to my first church

MEET SAPPHIRE.

college-aged Bible study. It was great!! I met some nice, new people and had a delicious home-cooked meal. I then played Settlers of Catan with a few of them and didn’t hopelessly lose- yay! The young married couple who had us over for the game after the study also has a pet turtle that roams around the apartment. AHH!!! So I had a great time with Sapphire, the turtle! And Sunday was another gorgeous, heavenly day of hiking. A friend and I hiked 7 miles to and from Windfall Lake, which was just amazing. It got a little scary for me at times, walking on slick wooden boardwalks and bridges, but I really enjoyed it! We got to the dock on the lake just as the sun was at its highest, and I laid under its warmth for a solid half hour. It was incredibly peaceful! I have really cherished these weekends!!!

So another week begins. I will probably be picking up on where I left off with those classes, and I am prepared to learn and grow a lot more this week! JAMM afterschool programs are on Monday and Wednesday at Glacier Valley, so I will start the week with that. :) I’ve also learned that schooldays can easily become 12-hour ones when you have activities after school (which happened when JAMM and “band night” started on Wednesday last week!), so I am pretty much preparing myself for anything! If someone had told me I would be going to bed at 9:30 and waking up at 5:30 most days, I wouldn’t quite know if they were still talking about me or not. It’s been an adjustment, but...GROWTH MINDSET! I can DO this! Okay, I’m done with the encouraging self-talk for today. Happy Monday to all, and don’t forget to give yourself some grace today. :)