“Smart is something you become, not something you are.” That is a quote from someone who has a growth mindset. People can have either a growth mindset or a fixed mindset. People with growth mindsets generally do better with learning because they believe that if they work hard then they will learn more and be smarter. People who have a fixed mindset believe that they can not be smart because they weren’t born with it, this usually causes them to have less motivation and do worse while learning. I have had a fixed mindset in the past but now I am sure that I have grown and changed so now I know that I have a growth mindset.
In the past I had a very fixed mindset. In elementary school I constantly thought I wasn’t smart enough, this all started when I was in first grade and my teacher, Ms. Grobe placed me in the red group for reading. The red group were the worst readers in the class, I remember I hated when we split up into groups so I would always go to the bathroom and stay there as long as I could without getting in trouble. I would try to avoid reading because I thought I wasn’t smart enough.
The next moment that I remember having a fixed mindset was when I was in third grade, my teacher, Ms. Lozano would always take timed math quizzes everyone was supposed to see how many questions they could answer in 1 minute. My friends would always have the entire page completed and I would never have the entire page, Usually I would have only have about half of them completed. I now realize that if I would have practiced more I could have eventually been able to complete the whole page. But when our teacher gave us practice sheets as homework I never did them because it frustrated me. Again I was always avoiding my problems because I felt that I wasn’t smart enough and I wasn’t going to get any smarter.
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I feel that right now I have a very strong growth mindset, even though in the passed I had a fixed mindset. Throughout my high school career I have found that I tend to have more of a growth mindset. I first noticed my growth mindset when I was in my government class in ninth grade at my highschool Highline Choice Academy. I was struggling to make my essays long enough for her class. One day I finally asked my teacher Ms. Crawford for her help on my essays, after I got her help with that it was very easy for me to write my essays ong enough because I knew the details she wanted me to add. I had a similar experience in math when I missed some school in tenth grade and I was very behind so I couldn’t understand math.
I asked my math teacher Ms. Kaur what I could do to catch up again and she told me to stay after school on wednesdays. In highschool I have found that we get a lot of reading assignments. The reading could get very difficult and I was not the strongest reader, but I found myself not getting intimidated by the big words and complicated sentences and actually taking the time to read the articles. Throughout all of those difficult times in my high school career I never gave up I pushed through them and that proves that I have a growth mindset because if I had a fixed mindset I would have thought I wasn’t smart enough and just gave up.
I have now realized how important it is to have a growth mindset. I used to have a fixed mindset, now I have a growth mindset it has helped me learn so much more than I would if I still had my growth mindset. I hope everyone knows the importance of a growth mindset and strives to have one like me.
