Working Through the Words

One of the most important aspects of my career at Rhode Island College and the School of Education, has been learning all about fixed and growth mindsets. After I first started learning about the difference between them and reflected on my own experiences, it was really difficult to kind of realize that the environments around me that I had myself in a fixed mindset throughout a lot of my childhood. Reading the piece by Thomas really made me reflect on the idea of growth and fixed mindsets once again. For me, growth mindset was something that I thought was like the holy grail of mindsets, but it never occurred to me that there might be something to question on the subject. It is really something else to look at Thomas’s writing and consider how deficit ideology comes into play in terms of fixed and growth mindsets. One section in particular stuck out to me when Thomas wrote, “One way to flip this ideology is to recognize that all students actually begin each assessment with 0...

As one of the people who identified themselves as a writer in our first class, it was strange for me to read through these three articles and actually finding myself trying to make sure that I understood what being a "writer" meant. As I had previously explained, I have gone months without writing in my journal due to academic or work-related responsibilities, but I have still decided to label myself as a "writer." And I am glad I have labeled myself as one, and I feel like Cameron, the NCTE, and Thomas would all encourage me to continue that label. However, I know Cameron would definitely want me to stop making excuses for my lack of writing in the moments where I kind of just stare at my ceiling, thinking about all of the responsibilities I had to do the next day. The idea of "grabbing" really caught my attention and struck some sort of chord with me as I think about how the last date in my journal is from the beginning of this month. There are a thousan...