Growth Mindset: Learning Beyond the Classroom

One of the most exciting things about the growth mindset approach is that it applies to all kinds of learning, not just the formal academic learning that you do in school. So, think about that: where do you see yourself doing the best job of applying the growth mindset in your own life...? Maybe you are a serious athlete, or a foodie, or a musician, or a traveler... so many possibilities! Think about the aspect of your life where you see the power of the growth mindset at work and write that up as a blog post.

As of right now, school and work kind of take over my life and my day to day activities… but this is okay. I am a student, so I know that in order to be the best I can be, I need to be dedicating a lot of time on my studies. In the future, though, I have aspirations.

One thing I really want to do in my free time (If I ever get any) is start my own blog. I already journal, so blogging I think would be a great way to get to reach out and let others explore my world. I have many ideas for this, but I haven’t had much of a chance to get started… which I need to change!

Since I love travel and fashion, I know those are two aspects I am going to utilize on the blog. We will see what else I come up with! It is exciting to know I have the potential to create whatever I would like. The world is still my oyster.

Me ASAP

Tech Tip: Canvas App

Tech Tip: Canvas App

This week, I decided to install the canvas app onto my iphone. It took a little while for the app to accept my username and password… it was saying it was invalid for a long time! 
After being a little frustrated and uninstalling/reinstalling the app a couple more times, I finally got it to work. Now it is time to play around on it!

If anyone else has the log in problem, let me know by commenting! I would love to hear that other people had the same issue as me and what they did to fix it!

Learning Challenge: Attention and Meditation

Meditation is something that I take very seriously. Since I was in high school, I have practiced yoga. I love to tell my friends that it is more than a form of exercise, it is a thought process. Not only does my body feel stronger and relieved afterwards, but my brain feels clear and strong.

Whenever I can, I attend Bikram yoga, which is often referred to as “hot yoga” because the room is typically 90-107 degrees. It is very tough to get into but ends in being the most rewarding experience. Your body relaxes itself through this process, and your mind must stay determined and focused in order to keep you going throughout the entire thing. Truly an amazing experience that I would recommend to anyone who asks.

Some Basic Poses

Reading Notes: Nursery Rhymes (Part B)

The Nursery Rhyme Book by Andrew Lang

Read it here

Reading Notes B:

-Jingles

-Love and Matrimony

-Natural History Part 1 and 2

-Accumulative Stories

-Relics

Little Miss Muffet: a relic

Jingles:

-when I think of jingle, I think of television commercials

-onomonopias

-many sounds and names

-quite a few recognizable

Love and Matrimony:

-these were adorable to me

-”Jack and Jill” is an all time favorite

-I do not understand why Jack Sprat was classified in this other than the fact he was married

Natural History:

-all include animals or months or locations

Accumulative Stories:

-I like these! They are longer and kind of keep going

-reminds me of the “picnic” game from childhood: each child has to say what they will bring to a picnic; after saying what they will bring they have to go back and say what all of the children before them said they were bringing; keep going until someone messes up

Relics:

-Miss Muffet: love

-some are quite exclamatory

Reading Notes: Nursery Rhymes (Part A)

English Nursery Rhymes

The Nursery Rhyme Book by Andrew Lang

Read it here

Reading Notes A:

-Tales

-Proverbs

-Songs, Part 1 and 2

-Riddles

-Paradoxes

-Charms and Lullabies

-Games

Humpty Dumpty: a Riddle

Tales:

-seem to tell a story more than a lesson

-lots of repetition

-”head, head, head”

-”make, make, make”

Proverbs:

-confusing

-do not make a lot of sense to me

-also quite repetitive

Songs:

-very rhythmic

-lengthier than previous (proverbs and tales)

-Interesting: I knew “Polly put the kettle on” growing up but we always spoke it, never sang

-many of these are also popular in the United States

Riddles:

-I liked these but many did not make sense

-Humpty Dumpty: one of my favorites as a child

Paradoxes:

-I love reading these because they make your mind scramble

-used to babysit some children with a book of these that they always wanted to read and I could never get them right on the first try!

-kind of like tongue twisters

Charms and Lullabies:

-even more like tongue twisters

-”Peter picked”... one I used to say as a child

-some of these were used by my kindergarten teacher to teach kids how to properly speak/help with lisps

Games:

-never realized “Jack Be Nimble” was a game

-some of these are really fun! Very entertaining

Week 10: Reading Notes B: Tejas

When the Storm God Rides In

Tejas and Other Indian Legends

Bibliography: by Florence Stratton

Collected by Bessie M. Reid

1936

Read them here

READING B:

Favorite readings

From "When the Rainbow was Torn"

Why Hummingbirds Drink Only Dew:

-interesting personification of hummingbird

-”bad habit of gambling”

The Maiden Who Loved a Star:

-Indian girl from desert of western country

-looking for purple ripe fruit of the prickly pear

-noticed one star was brighter than the others one day when the sun began to set

-personification of the star: “Was the star winking down at her? She thought it was. She dreamed of the shining star that night, and she saw in her dream that the star was the home of a fine, tall youth, a sky dweller”

-visited her star for seven days

-”each night she dreamed of this fair young man”

-”full of love”

-”unhappy because she was so far away from her lover in the star-frosted sky”

-decided she wanted to die, so went to old witch woman

-wanted to be taken up to the sky “to live in the star with her lover”

-old woman says she must live but that she can change her into a different form

-drank from the potion the old lady gave her

-turned into a new type of shrub

-”When the sky youth saw what had happened, he leaned far out of an opening in his star lodge. He leaned so far out that the edges of the star broke with his weight, and he fell with sparkling pieces of star straight towards the maiden who had become a bush”

-”the youth was changed to purple blossoms”

-surprised not a shooting star

-became the ceniza

What they became

How Sickness Entered the World:

-sickness used to not exist

-”sickness was unknown in the world until two young Indians killed a messenger from the Great Spirit”

-dying medicine man

When the Rainbow was Torn:

-interesting: “there are flowers whose petals have in them part of the very colors belonging to the rainbow”

-cactus flowers

-Rainbow never touched cactus plants

-got stuck in the thorns on a rainy day

-white cactus flowers filled with the rainbow's colors

-BEAUTIFUL imagery

Rainbow Cactus

Week 10- Reading Notes A: Tejas

When the Storm God Rides In

Tejas and Other Indian Legends

Bibliography: by Florence Stratton

Collected by Bessie M. Reid

1936

Read them here

READING A:

Favorite readings

When the Storm God Rides:

-”great black-winged thunder bird which he rode like a horse over the Gulf at certain times”

-Storm God created the islands

-lived in the seas below the Gulf of Mexico

The Plant that Grows into Trees:

-interesting theory as to why mistletoe grows on trees

Mistletoe in a tree

Why the Woodpecker Pecks:

-simile: “looking just like a little man in a black coat and a red hat.”

-”And he is smart. If he sees you looking at him he stops pecking and slips around the other side of the limb or the pole and only sticks out his red head to peep at you”

-mescal plant: had little knobs that when eaten gave a magic power

-”The Indians who ate them had visions or dreams. They could see their gods and talk with their ancestors. But only those Indians who were medicine men and had the right to see strange things had the right to eat they mescal button. They warned everybody else not to touch them, or bad luck would come to them”

-everyone decided not to listen- poor little children wandered around hungry

-The Manitou “waved his hand over the Indians. They became birds. The black robes they were wearing turned into black feathers, and the red feathers they wore in their hair turned into the red head of the woodpeckers”

Woodpecker

Old Woolly Bird’s Sacrifice:

-simile: “the big flowers of the magnolia tree are like white stars scattered among the leaves”

-Woolly Bird: old Indian, gave up his life for his people

-Indians were dying of starvation

-”old heart was heavy with sadness” as people planned to leave because they were going to starve to death

-”Old Ones Not Afraid to Die”

The Cloud That Was Lost:

-clouds “float around in the sky during the day” and then “go to sleep on the tops of the [mountain] peaks”

-”they do this because they become tired while waiting in the sky to grow heavy enough to send down the rains”

-cloud ran away from brothers and sisters one day

-simile: “It had been chasing its tiny white tail like a puppy”

-rain= crying

-”wild phlox”- evening soft colors from runaway clouds