Working with Construction Trades students in Newaygo County has been a treasure of my life. A growth mindset has been present in our class since 2010. We have never resisted change. Many of the changes made in our program have been the focus of schoolwide Professional Developments well after our implementation. We teach and learn building in our class. Each phase builds upon the last. This is true in our learning and projects! We are never where we want to be. We must continue to build onto the sturdy foundation created.
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Growth Mindset has been present for many years and I did not even realize it! I of course assigned grades to students because that is what was required. The reality is that students have had opportunities to become masters or show proficiency in the learning community. These students work together to achieve a common goal and share successes. They will celebrate each other instead of envy. It is not time to demolish past practices, it is time to continue to build upon them to chart that new normal! The ever-changing structure of education.
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COVID showed us our deficiencies in digital learning. Many of our students had no technology in their homes. Many counties had school districts scrambling to figure out how to get technology into the hands of students. Accommodations were made and most students continued to redefine their success. The education world was thrown into a needed change. I believe that we must take lessons learned from these experiences and use them to initiate changes. My feeling is that minor adjustments are needed. Far too often we like to totally scrap all the hard work of the past to allow space to usher in the latest greatest. Remodels do not always have to go all the way to the foundation, sometimes it is a facelift or an addition. That is where we need to go. An addition that can improve our space while leaving a little bit of normalcy. Educational reforms do not always need to involve total demolition.
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I am excited to implement new ideas into an already solid learning community. The base of all successful endeavors is the relationship. Once the relationship is formed based off from trust & accountability then the community will move forward and embrace change as an opportunity not an obstacle. We will be implementing a blended model with some individualized paths for students to choose. We will continue to improve upon our growth mindset using models developed in this class. I look forward to these transformations as we navigate through the process!
