The other month we had a staff training session.

You know the feeling right?

A whole day sitting, listening to someone chit chatting away about things that are totally irrelevant.

Techniques that will probably be forgotten by 95% of the people attending the course, as soon as they walk out.

But this time, there was something pretty major that I took away with me.

The training was all about Differentiation in the Classroom.  In layman’s terms, that means how we can teach the same to all different levels of pupils.  How we can cater for all within one lesson, and have each pupil leaving the classroom, feeling like they learned something.

It’s not an easy thing to do, from the Early Years through to the older children, but it is so important to actually present learning  in a way that a child understands.

The speaker talked about mindsets, and specifically Fixed mindsets Vs. Growth mindsets.

Now, I found some images on Google that give you a bit of an idea about what these mindsets are.

In a nutshell, we have to, as educators, allow our pupils to have a Growth mindset.  They need to feel that they can do it. They can learn something. They just have to keep on trying.

And in order for them to be able to develop this mindset, we need to have the same too.

Literally, the next day, I was talking to my own children, and Lil Man, who finds maths pretty tough, was chatting to me.  I have never been much of a mathematician myself, and I was ready to sympathise with him, saying I was never great at maths too, but then I remembered what the lady said the day before. So I altered my own words to say that, yes, I was never the best at maths, but I hadn’t stopped learning, even to this day.  In fact, I am ashamed to say, I don’t know my times tables by heart… thought with my own children learning them, I am getting better every day!

These statements below are a great way of altering your wording, so you can make any possible negative statement into a positive!

Since the training, I have been very mindful (We had to train on that, mindfulness, too once!) of the things I say, and how I say them.

Yes I hate sports, and I used to say I was never any good at them, but the fact of the matter is, I was pretty good at hockey, and netball. Discus and javelin, I loved. Badminton and tennis, again more physical pursuits that I enjoyed.  I just enjoyed other things more, so I never developed the skills.  Who knows, I may have been another Fatima Whitbread if I’d kept up the throwing!

Lil Princess loathes going to Punjabi school on a Saturday for 4 hours ( I would too!) but my in-laws were adamant that she should.  I was always saying I wasn’t bothered about sending her, as I never learned how to read and write my mother tongue.  I speak it well and understand it better than many Punjabi GCSE holders.  But then I realised that I should be positive, for her sake.  She may not be great at it, but if she carries on, it’s another feather in her bow. And If she really hates it still by July, we can stop it, but she won’t have been a quitter, she will have given it her all for this academic year.

The whole mindset thing, it’s really what I am about, actually. I have always been a glass half full kinda gal, seeing the silver lining, and I think that is really key to having that growth mindset. Positivity.  Knowing that something can happen, and that things can change. It’s just sometimes it’s you that has to embrace change first and try your hardest!

So, the moral of Ritu’s latest ramblings?

Don’t think “I can’t!” think “ I’ll try!”.

Images courtesy of Google.