Thank you for all of your entries into the 19th Growth Minded Educator Contest! The Growth Minded Educator of August is: Matthew Barrett!
Congratulations to our winner, and thank you to all who participated!
Below is the winning entry to the contest question: "Growth minded people use feedback to help them grow. How do you provide opportunities for your students to provide feedback to one another? Send us a description of what you and your students do!":
To encourage feedback among my college students, I created a class wiki where they all have usernames that are anonymous to each other, but not to me. This allows them to give feedback and discuss topics without fear of judgment, rejection or reprisal--I see much more participation on the wiki than I do in the classroom. Just this semester, I've created a system for peer graded essays on the wiki, where each essay gets a grade averaged from 3-5 other students who graded it using a rubric. So far, it's been very successful; I've seen better essays in general because they are more familiar with the rubric, and the essays have increased in quality so far over the semester. I still have to watch for lazy grading, but this system has lightened my workload and increased the GM of my students.
Matthew Barrett--The Brain Trainer
About Matthew Barrett
I teach Psychology and Human Growth at Saint John's River State College in Florida, and I run my own brain training business (Brain Trainers Mental Fitness LLC). I love sharing growth mindset concepts with students as well as with my private clients. Even at home, my wife and I have added "yet" as a third "magic word." When anyone says, "I'm not good at this/that!" we say, "What's the magic word?" It may get some grumbling, but they say "...yet," and then we talk about how effort is so much more important than natural talent.
