The Mindset of Change ~ Creating a Better Classroom

     Think back to your high school days for a brief moment. Who were your most memorable teachers (good or bad)? What specifically did they do that made them great (or terrible)? What do you think their mindsets were when it came to teaching; did they continually adapt or did they stick to their script? Hold onto this thought.

    Now, I want you to think about a class that you don't remember well or don't have any memories attached to that class. What made this class unmemorable? Can you remember who your teacher was? Was the content too boring or did the teacher not love the subject matter?

    The reason I ask these questions is that I want you to imagine what your teachers' mindsets were. Each teacher has a different view on education, different ways of teaching, and different processes to teach information. From my experience, my most memorable teachers (the good teachers) had great mindsets, they adapted, and they cared about building relationships with students.

    This leads me into talking about the three most important mindsets teachers should have if they truly want to change what learning looks like in the classroom. These mindsets are:

1.    Create a simple structure for students to use (and update) to gain insight into how to best collaborate and learn together.
2.    Build better questions together.
3.    Learn from your mistakes by exploring them together.

    Whether you like to or not, life is about figuring out to collaborate and communicate with others if you don't agree with them. The classroom must reflect this and allow kids to figure out ways to work with each other. As the teacher, it is important that you understand how your students learn and use that to create learning groups. As the year goes on and each kid gets better at working in groups, then you can create a group of students who are complete opposites in learning styles. This structure is simple, go from groups that work well together and slowly create groups of kids who have to figure out how to work together. To gain insight, you can have students reflect on each group member and reflect on themselves. 

    Helping students build questions is extremely important not only in the classroom, but in their everyday lives. Building questions can follow a process, such as the "what, where, when, who, why, how" model. As the students start a topic, they can start by answering the questions in this model. As they progress in that topic, you may model some questions they may have and then ask them to write down questions they have.

    Exploring mistakes through reflection is extremely important. If we do not reflect on our mistakes, how can we improve? This is what your students have to understand in the classroom. Everybody makes mistakes, but how are you going to change your approach so this mistake will not happen again? Mistakes shouldn't be celebrated, but rather treated as a learning moment. Many mistakes, especially in math, tend to be calculation mistakes, and students may have developed a process that can help compute problems for other classmates.