To write my academic mindset project I worked with my older brother and his girlfriend. They are both in college and were able to give me good suggestions on how I could get out of the high school mindset of not doing much to get by. Seeing them have goals for their classes and their kids helped me realize that there is more to life than going out all the time and that I want better for myself in the long run. It was a really good choice to work with them and bounce ideas back and forth because they are always showing me that you have to push yourself harder than what you think you are capable of if you want more in life. I watch them go to work and take care of my nieces every day no matter how tired they are or how much they have on their plate and I saw that if they can do it then I really have no excuse to be a better student than I am right now. While writing my project I saw that both of them were attending classes and doing homework all while taking care of two young girls and it put into perspective for me that I know I can do it. I wrote most of my project at home but next time I do a project I will do most of it at school because it can get crazy at home with my nieces there. I chose to write about my topic because the more I make myself aware of how I need to improve the easier it is to remind myself of how I need to keep going and force myself to be a better student if I want to move forward with my degree.
For my next writing process I am going to make a list of all of my points that I want to make in paper so that way when I go to write the paper I have a list of what I want to write about. My brother taught me that if I do this then it will be easier to build my paper and then I can take the points that I wrote down and branch off of those ideas to make the paper more full and it will lead to a better grade because there will be more content. I think this idea is where I can make the most improvement because with other assignments I would just start writing and would start talking about things that didn’t have to do with the assignment because I would lose track of my topic and it would make me lose focus of the whole point of the paper.
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Draft #1Carol Dweck and Alfie Kohn are two completely different people when it comes their academic mindsets argument. Mindsets are the way people think, take things, how their brain operates, people can have a different definition for what a mindset is because in this world I believe everyone has a different mindset. "In Teachers, Parents Often Misuse Growth Mindset Research, Carol Dweck Says" (Carol Dweck). Dwecks main point is that having a growth mindset can't just be told to someone, but that it needs to actually put into steps and into action! Now having a Fixed Mindset can be okay with some people because they are so comfortable with it that they don't want to bother with changing anything in how they approach things, and are also not even up to a new challenge given to them because of their fixed mindset! For me personally I'm not gonna lie, yeah, I do have a fixed mindset at times but at times I have a growth mindset, it all really depends on who other stuff I am focusing on. I know most students have a growth mindset because they are obviously going to school for a reason! They want to learn and they want to succeed, and that is what I am personally working on for myself. To only have a growth mindset would help me out in many ways, I would start to learn things and understand things more instead of sitting in school not caring or paying any attention into the class and throwing money away. My goal starting today is to start having a growth mindset instead of a fixed mindset. Whenever I am in class I'm always the quiet one. i don't speak much, but I do listen and I always want to chime in on class discussions, ask questions and just actually talk and not sit in silence for hours checking my phone knowing that theres no notification for anything. As of now I don't know why I haven't done research on this before writing this, because now I know I've had a fixed mindset this entire time! With my fixed mindset I just feel comfortable doing things my way and not liking any change; and that's why I've been failing at many things. My academic grades have always been average or below average and I want that to change A.S.A.P. and it will if i start using my growth mindset. All throughout high school I feel like i can barely remember any of the work I did, any of the important things that i should have been trying to learn, but never asked questions because of the fixed mindset I had back then I didn't care if i passed with a D, as long as I passed the class I thought I was fine. In the long run though it was a terrible mistake not having a growth mindset then. Something that caught my eye after reading The, Perils of "Growth Mindset Education"(...)(Alfie Kohn) was when Kohn stated " A substantial research literature has shown that the kids typically end up less interested in whatever they were rewarded or praised for doing, because now their goal is just to get the reward or praise". I disagree but also agree with him, I say that because yeah a kid could keep on doing it for the reward and praise, but that doesn't mean that they are not interested in what they're doing? Thats what doesn't make sense to me, yeah some kids I completely understand that if they see that they are getting rewarded and praised for it they will just keep doing the same thing over and over again, but only or the reward. Other students that are just very good at something and they are getting rewarded and praised for it, that can give them motivation to just keep doing what they have been doing but just more into it, you can say. There have been many, MANY teachers that I've experienced that never cared if you even had an important question, you know, the ones that sit there and make you write notes all day and don't even really teach! They just write down the notes or you look online and they basically tell you to teach it to yourself, but theres only been a few that rude. But I have had a lot of teachers that would do the same thing with writing a ton of notes and if you asked a question they would just get annoyed and would tell you to look in your notes or just briefly explain it to you quickly because they think that we all just can teach it to ourselves basically and those are the type of teachers that sort of rubbed off a fixed mindset on me. I always would ask for help in class in middle school, and high school but I was getting in a lot of trouble in my early years so they basically put me in with the hardest, meanest teachers in the grade that everyone would be like "Damn, that sucks you got them as your teacher, haha good luck with that". Those teachers never seemed to help me out and to be honest I sort of started to give up and get into more trouble in school because I wasn't doing good in class, would get in trouble at home for failing. I always need teacher or a tutor that I can connect with and be able to feel comfortable asking them questions, someone that will sit there and converse with you and further explain something for you. That's me pretty talking about Sabatino, but i just haven't had a growth mindset yet. It always makes me more confident in myself and gives ,myself motivation when I have a cool teacher that actually sits down and helps you out when your struggling, not just run through your notes real quick barley help or even help at all if you lucky if they are one of those teachers that make your mind turn into a fixed mindset. When I was younger I was pretty bad in school with book work. It took me a long time to make any progression my eyes were messed up which made me get glasses. Back then we were so young that I feel as if the teachers didn't think how we did in school mattered we were little kids in second or third grade. Dweck states (In Teachers, Parents Often Misuse Growth Mindset Research, Carol Dweck) that instead of pushing off your students you should sit down with them and explain what they did wrong and how it can be fixed for next time. If you understood how strict my parents were then you would know they were giving me a spanking if i came home with a bad grade which I was doing. When it came time for parent/teacher conferences my mom asked what I was doing wrong to all of my failing classes teachers. They all said that I was just not paying any attention in class I would sit there and do absolutely nothing, not ask any questions or anything, even when they tried helping me I still wouldn't do it. After my parents came home and talked to me about how important school is and said that it will be a big part of my life I changed how I acted in school. I started paying attention and not screwing around, I went and got glasses because my vision was making me not able to see the board even when I would be in the front. What I'm getting at is that when you have the Growth Mindset and not a Fixed Mindset you can achieve anything. My parents sitting me down and having that talk with me and telling me how serious school is and how it can shape out the rest of my life, and how they started helping me with my homework and started making me study instead of not caring was a big factor into my positive growth mindset. All in all, I 100% agree with Carol Dweck.
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