Baby, I was born this way!

Blog #6: chapter 8

Alex Pergolizzi

Creative connector:

1. "The destructive cycle is obvious: students want to get good grades so that they look smart, but they can't study to do so because that marks them as dumb." (p. 167) This reminds me when I was in high school and fed into this horrible cycle. I would complete ALL of my classwork and I REALLY wanted to participate by raising my hand because I KNEW that I had the right answer or a really good point to make. However, instead of raising my hand which would have been perfectly acceptable, I would sit in my chair and hope the teacher called on me randomly. How weird is that? The reason for my silly action is I didn't want my classmates thinking I was a "goody-goody" for completing my classwork on time and being more than willing to participate.

2. "Intelligence is malleable. It can be improved." (p. 179) I always used the fact that my mother wasn't "good" at math as my excuse as to why I wasn't "good" at math. I put "good" in quotation marks because after reading this chapter it wasn't that I wasn't good at math is was because I had no desire to study math or practice it. Therefore I wasn't very good at it. I think a lot of students use the statement "I'm not good at it" because they're just not trying hard enough or not asking for help when they don't understand a concept.

3. "Try to create a classroom atmosphere in which failure, while not desirable, is neither embarrassing nor wholly negative. Failure means you're about to learn something." (p. 184) This is a concept that I teach my students on the first day of school. Learning a foreign language means mistakes are going to be made frequently...and that's okay, I hope they make mistakes! When a mistake is made the teacher corrects it and the student learns (and if it happens a couple of times, that's okay too). I always follow this with the story about the time I walked into a bakery in Italy and meant to order a "calzone" (the Italian hot pocket) but I pronounced the word wrong and ended up offending the cashier because I said a dirty word instead. This shows my students that everyone makes mistakes (even me) and we just have to learn from them.

Idea Illustrator:

1. Praise- Willingham stresses that teachers shouldn't praise ability, they should praise process. This includes ALL levels of students. However, he warns not to give "false praise" praise that is really not deserved.

2. DNA - I chose a DNA strand because DNA is not the only place where a person develops their intelligence. The environment where a person grows up in also has an affect on their level of learning.

3.Keanu In the text Willingham quotes Keanu Reeves, "I'm a meathead. I can't help it, man. You've got smart people and you've got dumb people. I just happen to be dumb" (p. 173). Well Mr. Reeves, after reading this chapter I can successfully say that you're just feeding into the cycle and to break free you must know that your intelligence begins with how you view yourself.