How do you exemplify the Innovator’s Mindset?  Consider the characteristics of the Innovator’s Mindset, present three and discuss how they are reflected in your instruction or how you might change to better espouse these characteristics.

The three characteristics of the Innovator’s Mindset that I exemplify the most are empathy, resilience , and reflection.

Empathy

As an older adult, it can sometimes be challenging to think about what my classroom is like from a child’s perspective.  One of the main strategies I use to help get every student engaged is through giving as much choice as possible.  Creating learner centered activities gives students the opportunity to choose what I could never pretend to know about all of my students.  While I try to give my students as much choice as possible, it is not always possible to give them open ended choices.  Typically, I am limited by the choices within an online entity such as PebbleGo.  This limitation is set by the county for safety, and by me for ease and consistency of access to the information. When learning and writing paragraphs, I give my students the ability to write about anything on PebbleGo that fits into the parameters of the writing task.  For instance, when we have written about life-cycles in the past, students could write about any animal that was on PebbleGo.  This has proved very effective for student engagement and, ultimately, learning.

PebbleGo provides hundreds of animals for students to choose from to research. There are ten choices just for sharks.

Reflection

I have always agreed with Couros with respect to reflection when he states that “looking back is crucial to moving forward” (Couros, p. 70 2015).  Educators must examine their implementation of learning activities to determine what worked and what did not work in order to make changes, however large or small, to create more learning opportunities in future lessons.  I am constantly using mental down time, like when I am driving, to think about my lessons and how they went, what went well, what went not so well, and what I can do to make it better in the next iteration.  Perhaps it needs to be completely overhauled, maybe a small tweak, or maybe something totally new should be tried.  This recently happened with my second grade team in math.  We decided to teach two digit addition within 100 in a different way than the curriculum’s use of open number lines.  After two years of trying to find ways to make it work, we decided it was time to move to different strategies that are more accessible to our students.

This example of the splitting strategy to add two digit numbers is less abstract and more accessible to our math students.

Resilient

Resilience is the ability to persevere in the face of adversity.  Innovators are not afraid to try new ideas and understand that failure is an integral part of finding new paths.  I try to instill this characteristic in my learning family by announcing when I am trying something new.   When finished, the class will help me reflect on how it went.  If it worked well, great.  If not, I will look for other solutions and try them, too.  I am pretty good about being honest with my students when I make a mistake, especially in trying something new.  I feel that my openness models how I am okay with mistakes as long as I am continually trying to grow.

Networked (Need)

I feel like the obvious area that I need to work on with respect to the characteristics of an Innovator’s Mindset is that I need to be better networked.  I previously commented about the apparent lack of networking within Baltimore County, but that there are options outside of the county.  I am a member of “Second Grade Buddies”, which is a Facebook groups of second grade teachers in Baltimore County.  This is helpful in certain aspects, but I really feel that I need something that is a bigger and more organized network to help me move forward with innovative ideas.

References

Couros, G. (2015). The Innovator’s Mindset: Empower Learning, Unleash Talent, and Lead a Culture of Creativity. San Diego, CA: Dave Burgess Consulting, Incorporated