We dedicate time at our monthly staff meetings to reflect on, learn about and share ideas about our school story focus.

Recently, staff took time to reflect on their own journey about growth mindset.  Using the Making Thinking Visible Strategy, I Used to Think...Now I Think, staff reflected on how their views on growth mindset and building resiliency in our students have changed since they started this journey three years ago.  The purpose of this strategy is to explore how and why thinking has changed and to consolidate new learning.

After a five minute quiet write, staff worked in groups of 2-3 to share their reflections.

Some quotes:

"I used to think you needed to have direct lesson what growth mindset is and looks like and that was that. Now I think you have guided lesson about growth mindset, but some of the learning happens organically in the moment and that it is important to highlight for students where these mindsets fit into growth mindset."

"I used to think just talking about it was enough.  Now I think it takes time and that modelling mistakes and finding information is important."

"I used to think it was enough to have the kids say "yet" at the end of things they were struggling with."  Now I think it is important to create a culture where kids work on their inner voice when they catch themselves giving up. We all have things we might learn with more ease and we all have times or things we really need to persevere through."

Once all voices were heard, groups chose one big idea and took that idea apart to determine next steps for our teaching and learning.

We used a strategy from the Ron Ritchart and Mark Church book, The Power of Making Thinking Visible called What? So What?  Now What?  This strategy identifies an important idea (what?), why it is important (so what?) and what's next (now what?).

Our next steps:

• Continue to educate families on why resiliency and perseverance is important (information nights and highlighting these concepts at learning check-ins)
• Begin to highlight resiliency and perseverance in curricular areas such as numeracy and literacy (what does perseverance look like in reading?).

These next steps give us a great starting point for 2023-2024 school year.