What I Learned Today!

“So what should we say when children complete a task—say, math problems—quickly and perfectly? Should we deny them the praise they have earned? Yes. When this happens, I say, “Whoops. I guess that was too easy. I apologize for wasting your time. Let’s do something you can really learn from!”
― Carol S. Dweck, Mindset: The New Psychology of Success 


Everyday I ask my students to challenge themselves. To go outside of their comfort zones, try something new, and grow their brains. I ask them to share their thinking with me, and with their peers, if if they do not (yet) understand themselves. They take their work, and each day do something to make their work better.

And what has all of this done for my students?? They have shown major improvements in all areas of their education, especially in Math! They finish their work and they ask me for a challenge question. They are starting to find new ways of figuring things out, new ways of explaining their work, and new ways to think and respond to their work! They exclaim “Ms. Morris - my synapses are firing! I understood how to do that today!” and “Ms. Morris, that was too easy for me today - can I get a harder math question??” It is everything a teacher hopes to hear from her students. My students are excited to learn, which makes me excited to teach!

And what about me? Well, today I learned that it is easy to ask someone else to challenge themselves, but it is another thing entirely to accept a challenge for yourself. I challenged myself to write this blog post, and then spent a week fretting, and trying to come up with an excuse to back out! Then it hit me - How can I ask my students to try new things, to challenge themselves, if I, their teacher, am not willing to do the same??

How I will challenge myself:
I will write in my own personal blog a few days per week (and maybe even share it with people!) 
I will tweet more, and respond to others tweets @mspjmorris
Rather than think “wow, I blogged to others, and look at all the grammar mistakes!” I will think “Wow - I finally blogged to others today, and my brain didn’t explode - yay!”

How will you challenge yourself today??