Self Organized Learning Environments

If you can take the time to watch it is a great video, Sugata Mitra is the 2013 TED Prize winner. The video centers around the idea that children can teach themselves. Sugata Mitra carried out an experiment in India where he left an old computer in a poor village and when he came back three months later the children asked for a better processor and new mouse. Sugata really affirms a longstanding belief that I've had that we can teach ourselves and so can students. As teachers we need to provide students informal opportunities to explore. It is important to balance out the overload of explicitness. This is where technology becomes so vital. This post relates to mindset, because we need to support students in accepting the fact that they can be in charge of their own learning.

Myth of Consistency

"Every time you try to perform at your best things are going to be different. From your body to the golf course no two times will be the same and you need to learn how to be aware enough to make the right changes and adapt to the variability."

http://golfsciencelab.com/handling-variability/?utm_content=buffera4e5c&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer

Another sport related topic that I am pulling into teaching. The quote above comes from the link above which will navigate to a podcast regarding golf primarily. However, this is another perfect example of how you can transfer something from sport into the educational arena and how mindset is pretty much everything. I love teaching, but I've also coached volleyball for seven years and so anytime I discover something for my coaching I think, "how can I use this in the classroom?" With this particular post...there are infinite variables that you will encounter in every situation of life and you need to be able to adapt instead of developing a dependency on consistency. Enjoy.

Believe Perform

There is an undeniable link between athletics and the classroom, so everything I have shared thus far can typically be adopted in either arena. This next post, stretches a little bit away from my mindset topic, but not too far because of the infographic you'll find below. Believe Perform is an organization that shares free infographics on a ton of things sports related. I really enjoy the posts and I am sharing the Twitter handle for my classmates to follow https://twitter.com/BelievePHQ or here is the website http://believeperform.com/.  Infographics are an awesome way to share information with others (students, parents, colleagues, administrators, etc.), Believe Perform has tons of premade infographics that could align to your way of thinking and you can share. Here is one below...

Iceberg Illusion

For my third post I will share the Iceberg Illusion. This is a pretty common poster, but it is one of my favorites. My science teacher desk at the front of the room is covered with many of my favorite quotes and posters including this one. They are all related to growth mindset and persistence.

The point behind the Iceberg Illusion is that we see the success of others, but we rarely see what all that person had to go through to achieve success. I think many students (and people in general) are often discouraged by the success of others, my students seem to have a faulty perception of that success as being "easy" for others when in reality success has been earned. I really try to enforce this understanding with my players and students, that in order to "succeed" you will almost certainly experience all of the things that are under water, " what people don't see."

I think this next image is relatable.

Train Ugly

Train Ugly is a mindset developed by Trevor Ragan that builds off of growth mindset. In addition to being a teacher, I have coached girls and boys volleyball over the past seven years and I stumbled across Train Ugly. The name sort of says it all, but the gist is that whenever you do something for the first time you are going to be bad at it and that is ok/normal. Train Ugly encourages you to step outside of your comfort zone because that is where learning happens. The website, http://trainugly.com/, has a ton of resources (videos, infographics, workshop opportunities, etc.). I have began to integrate the Train Ugly mantra into my coaching, teaching, and my personal life.

What is Mindset?

Instead of narrowing my topic to Growth Mindset, I wanted to generically define the term Mindset, first. According to Merriam-Webster dictionary, Mindset is "a mental attitude or inclination." What this means is that when any person approaches, for example, a task, what is their attitude prior to beginning? If said person chooses to have a negative attitude prior to completing the task it is reasonable to assume that said person is unlikely to experience success. In my explanation I was careful to emphasize choice, because it is my belief that regardless of the task we have the choice of how we will proceed.

For my first blog post, I will share the Fish Philosophy that was adopted at Crawford Central School District where I teach. It is a very simple philosophy, where FISH does not represent an acronym, but rather the origin of the philosophy. There are four principles that make up fish philosophy, located in the image below. I try to apply these principles in my class and everyday life.

https://prezi.com/mf7euoh0uatl/copy-of-fish-philosophy/

For more information on Fish Philosophy including its origin here are links to the website, book and video.

1. http://www.fishphilosophy.com/fish-philosophy-story/
2. http://www.fishphilosophy.com/product/fish-the-book/
3. https://youtu.be/_AAQT6ifGys