My Story

How bravery, grit, and pride made its way into my classroom

I  was going to begin my first year of teaching and I was thinking about what I want my classroom to look like.  I wanted to build students that were prepared for life and I thought a lot about what that would look like in the classroom.  I decided that I needed to do some research before making any plans.

I picked up a book I had heard a lot about to help me get started, Ron Berger's An Ethic of Excellence.  This book is all about building a classroom where students are motivated and care about producing quality work.  He discusses the of creating a culture in your classroom where excellence is key.  It is important to him that we assign meaningful projects and give students plenty of time to have self/peer reflection and time to revise their work.  I decided, after reading this book, that I wanted to instill this sense of excellence in my students.  I decided that PRIDE was an attribute I wanted them to have.

I then began to seek more ways to improve student engagement and classroom culture.  I wanted to teach my students about life and success along with the standards.   I found Angela Lee Duckworth's Video on successful people being gritty.  A "gritty person" is someone who is determined and will persevere through difficult times.  According to Angela Lee, these are the people who will succeed in life.   We all want our students to be successful, so I decided to add GRIT to my list of student attributes.

Also, over the Summer I was introduced to Jo Boaler by a colleague.  I got on her website, YouCubed , and began watching all of her amazing videos about math and researching her connection to Carol Dweck's idea of having a growth mindset .  It was just a few days later that I began reading Jo Boaler's book, Mathematical Mindset, that came in the mail from Amazon.  They spoke about not being afraid to make mistakes and seeing mistakes as a success rather than a failure.  As I began to piece together all of this information, I thought BRAVERY!  That is what I want my students to be... BRAVE.

There you have it!  The story of how I came up with my classroom norms: Be Brave, Be Gritty, Be Prideful!   This is the culture I want to build in my classroom.  I don't have all the answers yet, but I am going to learn from my mistakes and never give up.  I am going to be brave, gritty and prideful.