12 best growth mindset activities for teachers

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Are you a teacher looking to improve your mindset? Are you looking for ideas about how you can change your thinking? Then you are on the right page.

In this post, I have listed down 12 growth mindset activities for teachers and educators which you can use to grow your mind and become a better teacher.

top growth mindset exercises for teachers and educators

Being a teacher is a great profession. You get the respect, love and gratitude from the society.

When I was a teacher, I used to apply various methods and techniques which can help my students and benefit my own growth and mindset. While teaching I used to give 100% of mine.

In the list below you will find 12 activities which you can use to grow your growth mindset. These are the methods that I have used personally to grow. So let’s start.

1. take full responsibility for your results

The first growth mindset exercise for teachers on my list is to take responsibility for your life and results.

Taking responsibility means that you are in charge of your life and no one has the power to decide what your outcomes in life will be.

By taking full responsibility of yourself you will remain in a much better state of mind. Your courage will increase, decision making power will increase, you will be more clear about your goals.

2. Understand Your Students

This is a very great activity for improving your mindset. As a teacher it is not enough to just know the name of your students, you should go beyond it.

You should spend some time with your students and learn about their strengths, weakness, family background.

This simple activity will have a great impact on your teaching mindset.

3. Don’t Be Afraid To Say ‘I Don’t Know”

You may have often encounter this situation. A student ask a question and you don’t know the answer. In this situation, you should never hesitate to say ‘I don’t know’ if you don’t know the answer asked by the student.

Instead you should take time, learn the answer and then explain it to your students. It is much better than explaining them a wrong answer!

4. Visualization for Success & Growth

This is a very powerful exercise for developing the growth mindset in teachers. You should try to visualize what you want to achieve in your mind.

Try to picture yourself getting success or promotion in your mind. try to visualize that your students are getting good grades. This is a very great activity for achieving the desired goals.

You can check this program to manifest success and growth.

5. Identify Your Self-Limiting Beliefs

A self-limiting belief is ‘a belief or state of mind where you believe that your abilities are fixed and you can’t do anything to grow them’.

For example: I am not good at math is a self-limiting belief. Here you are limiting yourself to not being able to solve math problems and grow.

In this activity you have to identify all such self-limiting beliefs which are hampering your growth. After identification write them down on a paper and observe what you can do to overcome them.

A very powerful activity which can change your whole nature.

6. Daily Accomplishments Sheet

Sixth activity on my list is to make a accomplishment notebook. In this notebook you will write the accomplishments you achieved during the day.

By doing this activity everyday you will feel proud of yourself, motivated, and excited to teach students in a more positive way.

A great activity for personal growth of teachers.

You can use this awesome Nailed It journal book for writing your accomplishments.

7. Work with Parents

Working with parents is a great exercise for building the mindset. It paves the way for two-way communication between you two.

Parents teacher meetings will help you to learn more about your students, their behavior, and also what feedback students give their parents about you.

Using this information you can apply the necessary methods to improve yourself.

8. Sharpening What You Are Good At!

Abraham Lincoln once said “Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.” This he said in regard to refining the skill you are good at.

This is a good method of improving your professional skills. You can enroll yourself in online courses, workshops, teacher training courses, read research papers, etc. to achieve the feat.

9. teach online

In this age of technology it is the need of the hour to expand ourselves and have a presence online. Teaching online has many benefits for a teacher.

The first and foremost benefit is the flexibility of time. In online teaching you will have the freedom to set a schedule for teaching.

The next major benefit of teaching online is that you will be having students from all around the world. This will help you to have a very rich teaching experience.

10. Learning from Others

For this activity you need to become a learner. You should need to be open to learning from the experiences of other.

For this activity you can form a team of teachers, collaborate with them, ask questions. A great way to process the information.

This is a kind of golden opportunity where you will get the chance to learn about their mistakes and assess whether if you’re making them too. If the answer is yes, then you can change them.

11. Set up Your Environment

A positive environment is the key to growth mindset. If you have a positive environment around you, then it will greatly aids in your mental health and positive thinking.

With positive environment I don’t mean only placing books on the desk, coloring walls and other such stuff but also being cordial to your colleagues, showing trust and promoting a supportive teaching atmosphere.

12. The Pygmalion effect

Last but not the least activity for teachers on my list is to learn about the Pygmalion Effect.

This is a study done by Rosenthal and Jacobsen. According to this effect, teacher expectations influence student performance. So if you will expect positive from students they will perform positively and if you will expect negative from them they shall respond in that manner.

So if your mind will be positive the overall outcome will be positive.