of the high achievers in my class actually have a low self-efficacy. They can tend to avoid difficult tasks and become more upset with mistakes than other students. It is important to remember that their self-efficacy needs to be shaped and the classroom is a place where that happens.

I also found the portion of the article about self-handicapping quite interesting. I had never thought of how some behaviors were actually a form of self-handicapping to protect oneself. It is important to recognize this in the classroom and support these students with clear intentions of learning to scaffold them.

Also, self handicapping / learned helplessness can be stifling to their level of achievement if they have no internal drive or motivators. In turn, creates hopelessness and even higher achieving students that do well, but know they can't change their situation are observant enough to feel despair and internal drive moving forward with any plans.

Students also need to have self dependence to foster life skills and adaptive living skills for post secondary education. Students need to have enough organizational skills and be able to regulate their own learning for college or further job training.

I also was thinking about how a lot of our students, both high achievers and low, have low self-efficacy and how we can see that in our classrooms.

I feel I am living and breathing this particular quote from the Challenge component.

However, I also feel like I am working constantly within the realms of the first four components trying to find that perfect spot for each of my students.

While reading I was able to picture a few students who fell under each category. This article pointed out some interesting and insightful behaviors that directly impact not only student learning, but also their attitude toward learning.

-Jarett

Even in reading this, my fear-based brain went a bit into survival mode... I have to do more? I have to find greater capacity to meet them where they are? I have to make learning and the environment for learning more inviting and perceived as MORE ... Also, I found in some of these descriptions a bit of myself and the behaviors, mindsets and habits I've carried in the last few months. Maybe it's because of so many personal things in my world changing and stretching and hopefully growing, and maybe it's just because I'm at perceived place of "empty". But some of these self-attributes might be truer for me than I'd like too.

The second piece I reflected on was that all of this part of the book is based on perception. On page 45, the last line of the second paragraph is "A major purpose of schooling is to enable students to 'back themselves' as learners of what we consider worth knowing." As I read that, my understanding noted in my margin, was that school might not be about learning anymore, but rather about the perception of self as a learner. This was also something I thought and expressed in the Visual Learning class last night, with Dave N., that some of us are taking. In the world where schools have become the everything for students to grow into adults, teachers can't get to ALL the standards. We can't teach ALL the skills or materials or concepts, so we have to pick and choose. And within that choosing, I am hoping that students leave my room with the abilities needed to be lifelong learners. To be curious and confident that they can seek knowledge. But there we are again, it's back to perception, rather than concrete doing.

So maybe I've come full circle. My take away, I guess, is that I can't do much to help them do much, unless they're ready to do some. But there is hope that as I'm doing a little, maybe they can find a little value in themselves, to do a little more. And in this way some of the self-attributes will lean more positive, until they find themselves, maybe by accident, maybe on purpose, identifying their perceptions as actual realities in learning.