After watching this webinar, there are a few strategies I plan on implementing to strive to make my classroom one that is comfortable and safe for those who are grieving. The first is that I want to solidify even more than I have previously, the routines in my classroom. I learned in the webinar that routines, plans, and predictability were all lost for students in the pandemic and that this is a major source of grief and trauma for them and us alike. By creating predictability and previewing to the best of my knowledge what our weeks will look like together, I hope to create a little more stability for all of them. Going along with that though, Emily Prusator offered a powerful reminder that it is also integral to acknowledge when we don’t know all the ways our school might shift as variants continue to fluctuate. It is not helpful for us to pretend like we have all of the answers because it can mislead students and lead to distrust. Finally, I want to work on shifting labels in my classroom and getting away from using language like “bad feelings.” This will start with me changing the language I use in my day to day life if I’m hoping to consistently keep it up in front of my students. 

I want to commit to establishing growth mindsets for my students using similar strategies to the ones implemented in the two 25 minute sessions that are referenced in Artifact 1 from the Belonging and Growth Mindset handout. I want to convince my students that intelligence is not innate and to increase their challenge seeking behavior. I often find that the same students consistently attempt the “challenge” questions in our handouts and it is time I find a way to change this. One idea I have is deleting the “challenge” label so that students aren’t intimidated by the questions. Once they have completed them I can reveal that they were able to do the big thinking questions with no problems. Another idea I have would be to give students time at the start of the week to set a goal for themselves - one way they plan on pushing themselves in English. For myself, I of course want to reflect on my biases surrounding students’ growth capabilities and then work on actively espousing my growth mindset beliefs. I want to make improvement visible in my classroom through graphs that show student progress. I have seen that ever since we posted students’ progress on reaching their AR reading quiz goal in the hallway, students who are not necessarily the most proactive have been working harder on getting ahead of their reading goal. I want to interrogate hoke and mythical hopes further to better understand these concepts.