"Life begins at the end of your comfort zone" - Neale Donald Walsch
An Innovative Mindset
There are two distinctly different types of mindsets. The first is a fixed mindset and the second is a growth mindset. A fixed mindset is one that is not open to change, not open to challenges, and not open to failure. People with this mindset live in constant fear of failure, and sometimes to the extent that they will not try knew things for the fear of failing. A growth mindset is one that is open to change and open to failure. People with this mindset do not view challenges or problems as failure, but rather an opportunity to improve. A growth mindset is necessary for innovation, and just because you have one mindset now, does not mean you are incapable of changing your mindset.
Comfort Zone
Your comfort zone is exactly what it sounds like, your place of comfort. However, in order to do new and greater things, sometimes you have to leave your comfort zone. Fear holds us back, and this is especially true for the fear of failure, but it turns out if we can change the way we define failure we can do so much more than we ever thought possible. Failure should not be viewed as something bad, but rather an opportunity to learn from, and what really is failure? Well I think its when you decide to quit when something's too hard, or if you decide not to do something at all for fear you will be unsuccessful. When viewing failure from this perspective leaving your comfort zone is a lot less scary, and with focus and persistence you are able to do amazing things.
"Without risk there is no failure, but without failure there is no improvement"
Learning Something New
This is a project we did in which we had to either improve at something we could already do, or learn how to do something new. This project was extremely challenging and forced me to go outside of my comfort zone and really focus on having a growth mindset and failing forward. So, for this project I chose to learn how to do a ring muscle up. I chose this because I have done CrossFit for the last few years and this has been a skill that I have been trying to get for quite sometime, but had never devoted enough of my time and attention to. I did not get a ring muscle up within the two week time-span of this project, but I did continue working on them after the project, and achieved my goal within a month of the start of the project.
How can we make classrooms a safe environment for students to learn how to fail forward?
Throughout this school year, and specifically in innovations class we have talked about how important failing forward is to both the learning as well as the creative thinking process. However, this is something that I have realized is not emphasized in the class room, and I believe that this causes a variety of problems for students from higher levels of stress to a lack of creativity and risk taking. |
I am a person who strives for perfectionism in all aspects of my life. Even with the start of this project, and trying to figure out how to make classes "safer" learning environments, I was simply looking for the perfect solution. I noticed I struggled greatly with the Ideation part of the design thinking process. I think this is because I was 'scared' to come up with ridiculous ideas, I constantly noticed myself shooting down my ideas on the basis of practicality and other limits I subconsiencly put on myself. However, during this process I read something that completely changed my train of thought. It was J.K. Rowlings comencement speech. It was all about failure and honestly it made me think about how I was doing my project about failure, yet I myself was fearful of it and not embracing it and taking any risks. It was at this point that I began to think of my challenge from a whole new angle. I began to think what if I look at this from the perspective of changing student's mindsets (similar to the way I was able to change my own) rather than focus on changing the classroom/school environment. |
New Challenge: How can we encourage students to redefine the way they view failure?
The Start of my Redefinition/Ideation Process
This is a brief outline of the thought process that led me to this new challenge question:
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I love learning, but also recognize that not all students are the same in this aspect. For this reason my challenge became how do I share with others this information I have gathered? |
Links to some of my favorite resources I have found:
"The key is to embrace the value of failing — learn how to fail fast, fail often and fail forward, leveraging each setback and misstep along the way in order to do things smarter in the future."
Where I am at right now:
I have decided this problem is definitely a lot more complex than I originally believed it to be. I have begun to examine this challenge from multiple angles and definitely think I have gained a deeper understanding of the problem. And I know I have yet to come up with a true prototype, but I still believe this is a work in progress. I have made a lot of progress so far and gone down a variety of "paths of inquiry".