Ever notice how when you are annoyed with someone you can easily come up with numerous reasons why they are an annoying, lazy or mean person? I have noticed myself doing this with my husband. I will be annoyed about him not putting something in the garbage and soon I can come up with a list of all of his "offenses." I have realized that my frustration is more about my mindset than the actual behavior.
The same thing happens in our classrooms. Students say this is hard, I can't do this or this is stupid and their brain has a vested interest in making sure that they are unable to perform the task. No one wants to be proved wrong and it would be even worse to prove yourself wrong.
Teachers do the same thing when they say Student X will never be able to do this, Student A is mean or Student B is a behavior problem. We will see what we want to see. If we think a certain student is mean; we are more likely to see their mean behavior.
We know in athletics that it would not be beneficial to tell yourself that you can't perform a skill or that you are not good at something, but it is also not beneficial to have this behavior in other areas of our life.
What would happen if we and our students focused on what they can do academically and on beneficial behavior and thoughts?
Thank you for reading!
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