Latin School of Chicago

e upper school, too, has embraced growth mindset. e school launched an e-portfolio pilot project this year with seniors who are taking Honors Comparative and Global Politics. e way it works is this: After a student completes a writing project in this class, she or he does a self-assessment. e teacher, Kirk Greer, then performs his rubric. Next students do an online reflection, using a series of prompts. Students focus on the biggest difference between Greer's assessment and their assessment, set priorities for their next piece of writing, create challenges for their next writing assignment and identify what they were happiest with in their paper. "I recently gave my students 15 minutes to work on these prompts," said Greer. "ey were particularly focused and seemed very invested." Greer points out that the e-portfolios focus on each student's development and evaluate from a student's own benchmarks instead of comparing students with each other. Ninth graders did the same sort of e-portfolio in the fourth quarter in their English and history classes. "In the future, this will help faculty as they will have access to the e-portfolios. Teachers will be in a much better position to see student growth," said Greer. Monica Pickett Rodriguez, director of the upper school, points to the Global Online Academy (GOA) courses as an additional way that growth mindset manifests itself at Latin. GOA offers courses not available at Latin – like bioethics, entrepreneurship or architecture – that any upper school student can take on their own time, just for the fun of learning. "Our goal is for our students to want to love learning," said Rodriguez. e faculty and staff who attended Briceño's talk in January were asked to fill out an exit survey that asked them to identify one change they would make to help build growth mindset in their students or with themselves. One teacher said, "In our mini-lesson at Writers' Workshop I can talk about the stages it takes to make a book, the many drafts/illustrations." Another said, "I would like to continue to encourage my students to make mistakes and work in groups to help them understand there is more than one way to solve/answer a problem/question." Still another said, "I could be more explicit with students about discussions being in the learning zone rather than a performing zone." Source: www.mindsetworks.com – Monica Pickett Rodriguez, upper school director Each of the divisions will continue with growth mindset next year. Directors, teachers and faculty are in full swing working on professional development activities – including readings, software and continuing education – that will strengthen their knowledge. Lower school director Julie Brooks said, "Growth mindset is a work in progress and it will probably always be." l GOAL ACTIVITIES CONCENTRATE ON MISTAKES TO BE BENEFIT IMPROVE IMPROVEMENT HAVEN'T MASTERED YET EXPECTED GROWTH AND FUTURE PERFORMANCE DO AS BEST AS WE CAN EXECUTION HAVE MASTERED MINIMIZED CURRENT PERFORMANCE Learning Zone Performance Zone Latin Magazine » Summer 2017 29

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