Growth mindset is something that teachers and students both need to use in the classroom and school. Growth mindset can be useful and should be used in certain situations as a teacher. Growth mindset as a teacher is “knowing all your students can learn at high levels”, “understanding as an educator that you as well can learn new skills/tools”, and my favorite “embracing mistakes and using them as feedback for the betterment of your future”. There is a huge difference between having a growth mindset and a fixed mindset, being a teacher this day and age it is going to be tough to say that you have a fixed mindset, meaning you won’t change with the times and are going to stick with what you think is best for you and not the students. Students will also benefit from the teacher having a growth mindset because having a growth mindset as a teacher promotes “motivation and productivity in the worlds of business, education and sports.” One of my favorite things that I heard from one of the videos I listened to was “what we are looking for is students is effort and not intelligence.” I think that speaks for a lot of people not only myself, it is hard to teach hard work and persistence and effort than it is intelligence. Some students can be the smartest and most intelligent in the classroom but can also be the laziest in the classroom. Teachers tend to lean to the hard working self determined students who have a desire to work hard and continue to do their best. Not saying that those intelligent students get lesser treatment or attention, but if those are the students who think they know it all or don’t need help, then those teachers have a bigger tendency to go help and give attention to those who work harder. Growth mindset is something that as a future educator I think is very important not only for myself but my students. I believe that with having a growth mindset I can challenge my students while also praising and making my classroom/gym a healthy place to learn.

Being a students who wants to be a secondary teacher it is vital to try to build relationships with the students. When talking about relationships I mean positive relationships, a kind of relationship that is fulfilling yet challenging at the same time. From an article that I read the author quoted a man by the name of Thompson saying ““The most powerful weapon available to secondary teachers who want to foster a favorable learning climate is a positive relationship with our students”. I believe that to be one hundred percent true. We as teachers need to build these positive relationships with our students so that they know simple things like how the classroom is going to flow, what is acceptable and not acceptable and what kind of consequences are going to be given out in certain situations. Every teacher has had a mentor teacher growing up where they know what is expected and how they are going to act in certain situations. Communicate those expectations given out in a positive way. Students tend to act and treat teachers and others around them based on the energy and attitude that they are getting first hand. As a teacher you have to hold your students accountable for paying attention and answering questions in class. One thing that we need to understand is that teachers should call on students equally. For example use something simple like popsicle sticks with students names on them and whoever you draw out gets to answer the question and leave that stick out until everyone has had a chance to answer. Some students just need that push to answer or raise there hand. If the student doesn’t know the answer be encouraging and give them hints and clues to help them, don’t make them feel embarrassed that they don’t know the answer. The last thing that I want to talk about is correcting students in a constructive way you have to be positive in anything that you perfect with your students. Call out the things that they did good and ask them to work on the things that they did bad, never call them out for the things that they did good first and be positive and encouraging when they need help with work.

During the span of being an educator your going to have to deal with students that have trauma from home experiences. Whether it is abuse, neglect, or dysfunction at home. Now when I talk about abuse it can be talked about in different ways. Physical, emotional, and sexual. Those are stigmas that are hard to get over and should never be taken lightly. Neglect is the same way, with physical and emotional and can stay with a student for the remainder of their lives. Household dysfunction just means anything from drug abuse, mental illness and even divorce. Our job as teachers is trying to create these type of universal strategies to help create a positive classroom environment. Starting off by creating a classroom with expectations and rules and procedures and routines One of the best things for students is to have something in their lives that are stable and they know what to expect when they get to school. Make sure those classrooms are always positive and a great environment to be in where those children enjoy being there. These students go through enough at home, as teaches we need to welcome them in with open and warm arms and give them the support and the education they deserve.

Differentiated Instruction is based on learning styles and the ability to learn. When thinking about differentiated instruction in the classroom or in my case the gym, we have to find ways to implement activities for the needs of all students. When creating a lesson plan teachers need to be mindful of the fact that we need our students to be active in each and every lesson. Some rely on the IEP’s given for a specific student but the real question is, how are you going to meet the needs of that specific student and how are you going to relate it back to the activity that everyone else is doing. In physical education there can be a simple thing like a push-up. Although this may seem simple to some it is not always simple to all, you still want that student involved and doing some sort of upper body strengthening movement. So instead of demonstrating a perfect form push up, some students can do some other variation of a upper body strength movement. For instance if the student is close to being able to get the regular push-up that you are asking for then have the student go down to their knees and let them take some of the pressure off of their shoulders. If they are nowhere near then you can have them do a wall push up. Where the students stand flat on the wall and push up and out on the wall. If you have a student that is wheelchair bound then you can have them use free weights and push out and in using free weights. Having a plan for your students and planning ahead of time so all the students have something to do and don’t feel neglected in the classroom is something that every teacher should strive to do and improve on each and every year.

When writing a vision or mission statement I want to ensure the parents and the community that the school will be safe and always positive. Making sure both the parents and the community are involved in the school is key, the support from those two defenitly helps. I also wanted to mention how students of all kinds are also accepted and welcomed at my school, no matter the race, disability, or impairments. When writing a mission statement this is what I came up with.

The mission of Adam Grunden’s High School is to provide a safe, positive learning environment that assures the academic and social development of each child. Together with parents and community, the Grunden staff prepares each student to function effectively in an ever changing technological world. We will strive to support and to respect each student’s own physical and mental abilities. The Grunden High School provides leadership and direction when helping students strive to reach the highest of potentials.

Life skills can have a variety of meaning and a variety of choices to choose from. There are a ton of things in my area that I can teach that can be related to life skills or a life long skill in itself. Physical activity is one of the most life long skills someone can have whether it is running,jogging,walking, or just playing a team or individual sport. Being active in todays world is something that is very capable and easy but yet people still decide to sit at home on the couch and watch television or play video games. One thing that I will tell my students is to always get sixty minutes of activity outside or inside whether it is walking, jogging or playing a sport. People need to know the health risks that they are taking when they continue to put off exercise. One of the activities I would like to install in class is actually a take home assignment. I would like to have students log hours or minutes that they and someone or multiple people in the family are doing while being physically active. Students can log their hours and have a parent sign off on it. I will send a newsletter home with the students before hand letting the parents or guardians know what is going on. The lessons that we will be going through in class will be things that they can take home and use with their family or whoever they are being physically active with. So in this case this may not be one specific skill but it is a life skill that can be helpful for the lives of the students and the families in the future.

When thinking about a classroom what do they look like? Probably a lot of direct teaching, maybe some busy work to get the students to do something and give the teacher a break from lecturing. Social Interventions is put in place to stop all of that, we are seeing to many students to shy and not able to work with peers because they were never taught at a young age to lean on each other and use each other as resources. It is very evident that students lack social skills in todays classrooms because at a young age they were never taught any of these valuable skills. When thinking about different approaches in the social interventions category I like to lean on the Instructional Approach. What the Instructional approach talks about is telling, showing, doing, practicing, monitoring progress, and maintaining that progress. The way to implement this strategy is by assessing the students to identify the common skill deficits and then by identifying those deficits you gather lessons based off of those deficits to work with those students on improving that specific area. After you design those lessons you want to be able to establish those session procedures , notify group participants and then teach the social skills lessons. When you continuously do these things you want to wrap up by monitoring the students progress and then evaluate your progress and your plans by noticing if it worked and if the students are improving. The main reasons that students lack these social skills is lack of knowledge, practice, cues, reinforcement, and competing problem behaviors. These students need to learn and get these things at the very beginning of there school experience in order to succeed socially.

When researching a psychologist I wanted to find something that I related to as well as a relation to classroom management. Skinner was the psychologist who was found to create the Operant Conditioning Theory. This theory was designed to shape behavior by Positive Reinforcement, Negative Reinforcement, and Punishment. Positive Reinforcement is a type of shaping behavior where there is a stimulus given and a behavior increase. For example if Susie is supposed to be reading her book during reading time, and she is doing what she is told then words of encouragement or praise for doing the right thing increases her behavior. Negative Reinforcement is a type of shaping were there is a stimulus removed in order to increase behavior. Negative Reinforcement examples would look like a teachers complaining about students not picking up toys in the toy area, the students start cleaning up their toys to make the complaining stop. Now when they are told to clean up they normally do to avoid the complaining. The other side of the Operant Conditioning Approach is Punishment, Positive and Negative Punishment both results in behavior being decreased. I believe this relates to the classroom more than a lot of things. In my classroom I want students to be praised for doing the right thing, I believe if you create a great relationship and support the student then you can trust that they will do the right thing when asked. Setting expectations with your students is a vital thing for not only you, but the student as well. The students creating the expectations know what is expected of them at all times. Having a positive classroom environment is key for not only you as a teacher but for student’s growth in the classroom as well. I believe this approach works best for me because this is exactly how I want to run my classroom in the future.