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I learned how important it is to model. Having a toddler that is starting to repeat phrases and actions and reading about it was pretty eye opening to how students can do the same thing too. It's important that we model what we want to see in our students. In this case, we want to see resilience, accepting challenges, and using failures to get us a step closer to a victory. A lot of kids think that professional athletes they look up to are just good at what they do and aren't thinking about the 8+ hours a day they train and have been training since they were young. I need to get my students to see that success is a product of hard work and not just being smart or naturally gifted at something.

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My main takeaway was being reminded of how impactful what we as educators do and say to students really helps them to develop their own resilience. It is so important for teachers to model for their students what resilience looks like as well as help them to find their purpose and what they have to offer (their strengths). We can help to further cultivate their resilience by giving them choice in their learning. With these to combine we can help students build their authentic confidence which allows them to take healthy risks and persist in the face of challenges.

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I learned how important it is to be a charismatic adult and how to build resiliency. Being a charismatic adult helps student to learn and grow because they know that they have someone in their corner who will support and guide them. I feel like a strength of mine is building relationships with students but my goal this year is to be a charismatic adult to EVERY student. Another goal of mine is to give more student choice to help build resiliency in students.

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Making sure that I give myself and my students enough wait time it something that I was reminded of again this week. I want to be a fair and thoughtful teacher and model patience in my words and actions. I also want to make sure that students realize that learning is a life long pursuit and I try and share with my students new things I am doing and learning to show them that a person doesn't stop learning when they are done with school. The world is our school everyday.

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I learned that wait time is not only important to allow students time to process the information, but to also help students realize the importance of patience.  We live in a world where students are so use to everything being at their fingertips with tablets and phones, but sometimes they are not going to have that at their fingertips.

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Wait time is extremely critical to implement into a classroom. Being a special education teacher, I believe that it is even more critical as the processing speed of some students may be much lower. It is important for your students to understand the reason behind wait time, especially for the stronger students who may have to wait longer to give their answer. I also found that as educators we need to appreciate ourselves more, our colleagues more and even our students more. This can be done in so many simple ways that I plan to implement in the fall. This helps build a community and resilience within ourselves.

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This week, I am reminded of the many opportunities I have as an educator to influence my students every day. Here are my biggest takeaways:

Perspective: For this week’s self reflection, I learned about the difference between self-immersed perspective and self-distanced perspective. Before this week, I had not heard of this idea, so I did a little research on how I can integrate a self-distanced perspective in my everyday life, as well as for my students. According to Berkeley, four ways to practice self-distancing is by visualizing the situation as an observer, avoid using the pronoun “I”, writing about the situation, and focusing on your future self. What a powerful tool we have in perspective taking.

Opportunities for a Challenge: Throughout this week and throughout this course, I have a deeper understanding of the importance of really challenging all of my students. As a teacher with a license in special education, I have a passion for modifying and accommodating my students with 504 and IEPs; however, I need to be able to meet the needs of my higher achieving students by providing them with a challenging environment. A quote that sticks with me is, “Whoops, that was too easy; sorry for wasting your time. Let’s do something you can really learn from!” ~Dr. Williams on Effort Praise Examples.

Persistence: Being a persistent student is the key to making deep connections across learning a variety of challenging content. After reflecting on my current practices and what I have learned in this course, I now realize that I need to slow down, take the time to really work through the content (even if the equation, sentence, or event in the text is short), having the opportunity to really get students to analyze the content using higher order thinking questions is something that I plan to integrate into my lessons more frequently.

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This week I learned about the self-distanced perspective strategy. I really like this approach to solving a problem. When I’m frustrated about something, I can usually calm down and approach it logically when I take a quick break or deep breaths. However, this strategy also reminds me to view the problem from others’ perspectives. Adding this step to my normal calming routine will allow me to be more effective in my problem solving. I’m going to use this approach any time I’m frustrated or trying to solve a problem.

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This week’s learning has really inspired me to figure out two things.

1) How will I make appreciation of others and my own life a part of my daily routine? In what ways can I express appreciation and gratitude towards others? I had never really thought about the good showing gratitude does for my own resilience. I always knew gratitude helped me stay positive, but Aguilar’s chapter on gratitude helped me see deeper benefits as well. I want to incorporate some of her strategies in my own life these last couple of weeks of summer, as the bound-to-be-stressful school year approaches. There’s a lot to be anxious about, but this is also an amazing opportunity to begin practicing all of the things we’ve been learning in this class.

2) How am I going to continuously communicate to my students that the most important part of the learning process is the struggle? What will I do to stop my eighth graders from giving up when things get tough? What types of catch phrases, like “Tiger Up,” can I embed into the way I speak to my students to encourage challenges? I need to talk the talk and walk the walk for my middle schoolers to buy into a new way of looking at learning.

Both of these concepts will require an intentional effort that is built from day one with my students, and I am committed to doing what it takes.

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For me one of the big takeaways for Week 7's learning has to be our need to model for our students.  We need to embrace challenges in front of our students.  We have to courageously fall down in front of our students.  We must be open beacons of gratitude.  We need to slow down and  give ourselves and our students time to think, contemplate and consider ideas.  We must be willing to take risks and model vulnerability with our students.

Someone once famously said "Your walk talks, and your talk talks.  But your walk talks louder than your talk talks."  If we model a growth mindset for our students then they will join us on this journey. If all we do is pay lip service to the idea, then they will respond in kind. I owe it to my students to make sure that I'm walking the talk.

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How do we foster resiliency in our students. We provide them with challenges, choice and modeling. Students need to see and have explained appropriate behaviors and reactions. This modeling by teachers gives them a baseline to learn from. They can observe and judge the behavior in themselves and others. That can then lead them to make better choices and overcome challenges. When we provide students with choices they have a sense of control over their lives and learning. They are able to bring a bit of themselves into their learning. This helps them better understand who they are and how they are able to achieve. Challenges help students stretch their wings. Students must take what they have learned and apply it in order to be successful. As students succeed they gain confidence. They may not succeed by getting the correct answer but they will succeed by not giving up.

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One of my big takeaways from this week was making sure I create a culture in my classroom that embraces challenges! One way that helps create a positive energy towards challenges is by giving students more choices in the classroom. This sense of ownership of doing an experiment or assignment how they feel comfortable will give students more confidence to help them grasp the content being covered.

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I always get excited when “choice” is mentioned. This week there were several times that it was brought up in different forms. This year will be difficult to incorporate the amount of choice that I am used to allowing my students to have due to social distancing and possible contamination restrictions. But the quote from Aguilar in the conclusion of Onward might just become my new intention for the year. “You can choose how you respond to this event. This is your freedom.” Being innovative and finding new ways to create opportunities to provide my students with choice will be a top priority.

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It’s easy to see those students who already have a growth mindset in the classroom.  They are generally every teacher’s favorite.  It’s always much harder to work with the students who are so discouraged that they don’t want to try.  I was happy to read about the strategies teachers can use to encourage buy-in from others and help them to identify the growth mindset.  By providing student choice and time for processing, teachers can draw engagement from students.  Even for students who struggle academically, there are strengths that teachers should praise.  This praise helps students to accept the honest criticism about learning goals they haven’t met yet, and helps them begin down the road of learning and growth.

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These are 3 C's that kept coming up throughout reviewing the resources and completing the tasks in this weeks module. Challenging our students doesn't just mean giving them something that they can do that is tough but can be done with hard work and effort, it also means to give students choice in how they take on their challenges and letting them know that we believe in them all along the way. If we can foster an environment where students feel confident about themselves and are given a choice in which tools they can use to take on a challenge, we will build resilient students and kids.

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My biggest takeaway was remembering how much a model we, as teachers, are to students. Students look up to us and watch our every move to see how we react. This made me reflect on how important that will be, if we are in a hybrid model, how students will be looking at the adults for their thoughts and reactions. It is important to be positive about the situation and not let the negative thoughts and emotions be known to the students. The other takeaway I had was choice and providing challenges in the choice. This allows students to build on their strengths and learn in their own way. They can take ownership of their learning and how they can show off what they learned.

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My biggest take away this week is the power of wait time and modeling. Pausing before we speak can seem awkward but is so beneficial. The use of technology makes it especially hard. A pause over a virtual meeting seems even more awkward. The understanding that we assume everything with technology should be fast was a great reminder. We are not the same as our WiFi speed. The digital world is instantly at our finger tips but our brains and out student's brains need to pause and wait before they respond. Also, I love the reminder about modeling for our students. We can model how to embrace the good struggle, accept new challenges and to fail forward. It is so important for our learners to see us do this so they can do it themselves.

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continuing to offer choice within challenges

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continuing to offer choice within challenges

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My biggest take away from this module is the importance of offering students choices and challenges. I also connected the two and think that offering choices within challenges. I think that if we offer choices within challenges we make the challenges more palatable to our students. This will invite more comfort and willingness in challenges. By modelling how to use choices to our advantage and making the best choices for ourselves, we show students that there power in advocating for what you need to be successful. I look forward to looking at ways to incorporate more choices and challenges within my classroom.

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Looking ahead to the fall, the concept of wait time in a digital environment is really important to consider. I am hoping to create more opportunities for students to interact and collaborate with one another digitally. Building support in an online community is just as important as doing so in the classroom. In the process, I related to the concept of being a “charismatic adult” for my students. They need role models that both celebrate success and failure. Understanding that struggles are inherent in the learning process will help students develop a growth mindset. Teachers have the unique opportunity to support students in the classroom and help build up their emotional resilience. Especially considering the challenges that everyone will face this upcoming fall, we must display our own resilience to change.

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This week, I really enjoyed about learning how to get students to embrace a challenge. Throughout this growth mindset journey, I see how important it is to have students struggle and even make mistakes. That is where the brain learns. If students feel comfortable taking risks and pushing themselves to the point of struggle, they will want to welcome the challenge and will even think that it is fun. That is my biggest takeaway from this weeks material. The importance of "wait time" once again was a good reminder. This is something that I need to improve on.

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I found the article on wait time to be the very helpful. To be able to implement something so simple and have such an effect on student is exciting. Some takeaways from the article were to 1) 3-5 second wait time. 2) Wait time helps higher level responses and higher engagement. 3) Not to go to technology to quickly. 4) Wait time 2-may created more in depth responses.5) Ask open ended questions 6) Not to wait to long because it can be threatening.

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Wait time and putting the emphasis on the thinking is something that I have practiced, however teaching my students about the benefits of wait time and about thinking is something I want to implement in my classroom. I would like to come up with a lesson where they had to come up with several ideas and see if they would agree that is is often not your first idea that it is your best idea.
I also want my students to understand that resilience is just a set of assumptions they hold about themselves and their skills and they have the power to determine those assumptions!

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Most of the time when I read articles about allowing students more choice in the classroom the positives revolve around engagement and motivation. I thought that the article we read this week about choice it mentioned how it can help students become more resilient as well. This article was just another reminder to me that I need to allow students to feel more freedom in my classroom.

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I've spent a lot of my teaching career aware of being a role model to students and having high expectations for myself. In the past, I thought being a good role model was mainly about following rules and using good manners and exhibiting good core values. Through this class I have realized how important it is that I am modeling all the other stuff, too. How do I react when faced with a challenge? What happens when my idea doesn't work? What happens when change comes and it's not all that positive? Having a charismatic adult/teacher model how to face a challenge and persevere is just as important as modeling all the societal norms, too.

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No matter the age, students should be challenged. Using K/W/L , asking open ended questions, and using choice were not new to me. In the future, I would like to implement different sharing opportunities and differentiating the tasks. I picture my students learning point of view from being a character from a story or using statements such as I agree or I disagree. Tasks can be differentiated by just changing the length of time.

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Although there was a bunch of good information from the Onward book, something that I put into action right away was the Positive daily intentions big life journal. I liked the little today challenges and I plan to print them off and make it age appropriate for my kids ages. It could be a fun activity to do each day. Today during lunch I also ask what they wanted to learn how to do this summer. They each chose something and I then asked them how we/they could make it happen. IT was fun for them and we started right away at writing down our plan so that we can make sure to reach their learning goal this summer.

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I think my biggest take away was the article that spoke about wait time with technology. Technology is something that is now a staple in classrooms across the world, especially with Distance Learning. In this article, wait time referred to students being able to take a moment to reflect whether or not technology is the best resource to use at that time. Students learn when technology can be beneficial and when they may not need to use it to help with their thinking.I think knowing the "when" to use technology is an important skill for students to learn.

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I learned how my mindset is so important to be that of a growth mindset and to constantly model that.  I need to model the excitement of a challenge, but then make sure I allow enough time for all students to embrace the challenge.  I also must make sure I differentiate that activities to allow success for all.  I like the idea of "Island of Competence" and teaching the students about this.  I will try to praise the students' on their process, not their product.