Growth Mindset Project

This year, in first semester, we were tasked to learn/practice a certain task for two weeks, to try and develop a growth mindset. A growth mindset is when you believe that if you try your hardest, you can learn and master anything. For me, I chose learning a song (or half a song) on the acoustic guitar.

The reason for me picking this was because I have had a guitar for at least half a year, and I had used it a couple times, but never bringing myself to actually learn a song. I learned the beginning of songs I liked, and when it became too complicated for me, I would stop. I had started learning Acoustic Guitar when I was in Middle School, taking classes during the after school program High Tech Middle offered and I fell in love with the instrument. So when I decided to pick this as my topic for the Growth Mindset project, I knew this was going to take a lot of work.

Not only did the Growth Mindset project help me see exactly how much it takes to learn something new, but it taught me how easily I 
give up when things get rough. I tend to leave things if they become too hard for me, and I kinda curl into myself instead of opening up and asking others around me for help. This project definitely taught me that it takes a lot of hard work to learn something new, and make it a habit.

Not only that, but I realized that even though this is something I love, I wasn't going to be doing this everyday. I wasn't going to be able to dedicate 2 hours to practicing due to school work and extracurriculars, so on my own time, I had to come up with my own schedule. I'm going to be honest and say that I haven't touched my guitar in a long time. It has been picking up dust in a corner in my room for about two months now. The reason for this is that I lost interest to keep learning the guitar, and I wasn't giving myself enough time to practice. Due to this, I stopped trying and just left my guitar untouched.

​Continuing where I left off, the growth mindset doesn't just apply to learning new things or mastering a task. It also applies to Math through our community-building projects. Our projects in Math are easy, and they are very hands-on, but they are also something that everyone can work on. In these projects, we tend to work together with our group members in order to finish a task or complete a certain problem. During this experience, I realized that not a lot of people were comftorable with working in a group or teaching their peers about a certain step they were taking. There were various instances where I noticed my group getting irritated or nervous when I had questions about the problem, so I kinda kept to myself instead of opening up and trying to understand the problem. Due to this, I then fell behind, and I wasn't able to contribute as much as I would've liked to. Through this, I can definitely learn to never hold things back, especially when working with a group, that's why your teammates are there, to support and help you if you need it.

Around King Arthur's Table Problem

Description of the problem:
"King Arthur loves to invite the knights over to his round table for dinner, and often times, holds a contest for them. For the contest, King Arthur has the knights come and sit in a chair. He goes up to  a knight and says, "you're in" then moves on to the next chair and says, "you're out". He continues until there is only one knight left, and they become the winner. How can you determine which one is the winning seat without being aware of how many knights there are? Create a formula / rule."
Check out my work and project process by clicking the button below!

​I really enjoyed this problem a lot, because I found it easy to understand in the beginning. In the beginning of the project, we were tasked to have a "brain dump", where we write our ideas for the problem, and any questions we might have. Immediately, I wrote down three questions I had, and a possible way to approach the problem. When re-grouping with our teammates, I shared my approach to the problem and I felt good about my answers. Even though they weren't 100% correct, I definitely tried my best to understand the problem as best as possible. In the beginning, Mr. Carter also asked me to explain how one of my group mates approached the problem, and I was able to make sense of her approach myself as well as explain how to solve the problem. This was really helpful, and really fun to approach a different kind of problem than what I was used to.

Polymonials and Helping my Peers!

As someone that isn't very good at math, I struggle a lot. I've always struggled with the subject, because there's always a constant nagging in the back of my mind that says, "its going to be harder than last year; you won't be able to go through it; you don't understand it and asking dumb questions is a bad idea." Even though I have grown up in the High Tech community since 5th Grade, there was always something terrifying about math for me. I get that it might seem like an over-exaggeration, but it's true. For someone who was never properly taught math or from someone who asked for help but never got it, it seemed like math was a million miles away, and that I would never reach it. Yet, when I entered Math this year, this was a whole different class experience. Now, I'm not saying my other math teachers weren't good, I'm saying that I found it easier to understand Math when Mr. Carter was teaching me. He has a way of teaching you a subject and then letting you experiment with the problem by yourself, so you can understand it. If not, he goes through it again, or shows you how to do it individually on the board.

This year, a concept that really made me struggle, was probably exponents and polynomials. I had seen both of these concepts before, they were just harder to get through than others that I had done. This was a concept that we tackled in first semester. Now, exponents went over every kind of way to solve a problem that has an exponent and how to tackle polynomials the easiest and fastest. I had scene this before, so when I first attempted a problem in the packet that was given to me, I found it really easy. I found it easy to understand polynomials more than exponents, and through the knowledge that I understood from the packets that I had been working on, I was able to help my classmates. Lorena, a classmate of mine, has always struggled in math. As a classmate that understood what she was feeling, I tried my best to help her. During class, I would try and motivate her to do at least one problem. Try it, tackle it, and understand it. It was a little harder than I imagined in the beginning, but I knew she could do it because Lorena is smart, she just doesn't take in information the same way as others would in the class.

Through my knowledge of polynomials, I tried my best to teach it and help her in any way I could. Even if in the beginning it wouldn't make sense, I would always try my best to just explain the problem to her, and hope that she understood it. If not, I would try again. And again, until she felt comftorable doing a problem on her own. I felt like that was definitely a time that I enjoyed polynomials, yet struggled with it at the same time.
*this is the packet that was given to us when we practiced polynomials after having Mr. Carter give a lecture on the concept.

A Final Thought

This year, I have definitely grown as a person the most. I feel like before, whenever I would tackle any kind of problem at school, I would always have a closed-off attitude about it. All of this was due to what I had been exposed to in the past, yet I never felt comftorable enough to tackle a problem open-minded. This year definitely taught me how to do that, through the Growth Mindset project and all the min-projects we did with our group mates.

Through the Growth Mindset project, I was able to open my mind to trying something new. To expose myself to something I had never done before and say, "i can do this and no one can tell me differently." That was especially tough, but by saying "yes", I realized that I learned more and I absorbed the information given to me better. By not being stubborn and keeping to myself, I was able to understand the lessons better. I'm definitely trying to apply this to my other classes, and so far, it has worked out the same way.

Next year, I am taking Pre-College Algebra. The reason for my decision is because I feel like I understand Algebra, but not enough to take Calculus. I don't feel very confident in my algebra skills, and I don't want to put myself in a class that I know will be complicated for me. I definitely want to take advantage of the fact that I am able to choose my class, so I want to make sure that I'm also prepared as well. In order to do that, I can't make myself rush into a certain class because "its going to test me" when I don't even feel confident in the other class that is similar to the other one. If one class is calculus and the other is algebra, they're similar, but I'm not going to rush into calculus if I don't feel confident in algebra first. Which is why I decided to take Pre-Cal instead of Calculus.

Next year, I plan on really applying that mindset that I kept up this year. "i can do this and no one can tell me differently." Making sure I'm always being open-minded when it comes to working on something new, or asking questions to my teammates to better understand a problem. Even if it might seem hard in the beginning, I know I can do better next year in math, and in any class I have. By having a good mindset and always being open to trying new things, it might not be as hard as you imagine in the beginning. Of course, everyone has different ways of learning, but I know exactly what it takes for me to be able to succeed. As well as attending tutoring, which is something I didn't do this year (big mistake!), I will also be seeking out my teachers and classmates for help when I genuinely don't understand a problem. Always seeking out those who understand it will help, especially because I feel like I learn better when I work with my group and they help explain it to me. Student to student tutoring is very helpful, since we learn more from each other than from others.