#2 Reflection of "The Learning Myth: Why I'll Never Tell My Son He's Smart"

After reading the article, The Learning Myth: Why I'll Never Tell My Son He's Smart by Salman Khan, I developed a new perspective on teaching. The article talks about people’s mindsets toward learning. The article proposes to guide students toward success we must encourage them to persevere during difficult times. That during these difficult times and struggles, our brain is grasping and growing. My newfound strategy for teaching is that I will teach my students that failure is an option; in fact, failure is good if we learn from it.

Furthermore, students like to be praised and according to Khan, praising a child for attempting a difficult assignment is actually encouraging a student to take risks. There has always been the notion that praises and encouraging words empowers and motivates one to do their best.

Khan provided evidence from Dr. Carol Dweck of Stanford University to support this statement. Dweck suggest you should look for positive things to say about a students work even when pointing out mistakes with the work. Likewise, praising someone’s process is more profound than praising someone’s innate trait.

So to sum things up, this article has affected my approach to teaching. First, I will explain to students that intelligence is grown through effort, struggle, and failure. Secondly, in order to learn anything you must embrace and make positive use of the struggles and the mistakes of learning. The Wright brothers did not give up the idea of flying a plane because of the struggles and the failures they encountered, in fact, they persevered and became successful. Lastly, I will reward students for their effort knowing all students doesn’t learn the same. And in doing all of this, I am teaching students a growth mindset to help them grow their mind.