Growth is part of life, emotionally, physically, and academically. Education experts recommend regular measuring of students’ growth and success in the classroom as a way of helping teachers know if their students are growing at the right place and in the right direction. On the student’s part, having a growth mindset is critical to academic and lifelong success.

Besides providing your students with standardized testing after every semester or at the end of every school year, what else can you do as a teacher to aid your learners’ growth in and outside the classroom? That is the question that this article seeks to answer.

Measuring Student Growth

Student growth is when learners can increase their intelligence levels, discover and grow their talents, and learn new skills and abilities consistently. It also means instilling a growth mindset so that they start believing in their abilities, rather than doubting their chances of developing over time. You will know that your students are growing in the right way when they start showing signs of being thirsty for new information. They will also start seeking out opportunities to tackle challenges and grow their skills.

Here are 5 ways through which you can inspire growth in your students:

1. Create Communities

Communities can be within a classroom, across grades, or between students who share common interests, such as a sports lover community. Educators can foster a community that allows students to work together for a purpose bigger than their selfish interests. It gives kids a chance to belong and to have their voices heard. This will allow educators to monitor how students in the same community look after one another, how they appreciate the individual and collective effort, and how they create a conducive environment for sharing ideas. When that happens, the kids get smarter together and grow together and educators can know that they did a good job.

2. Instead of Praising Intelligence, Encourage Effort

Educators should encourage effort made and not the brilliance or intelligence of a student. Of course, some kids are born intelligent and will perform well in the classroom even when they behave badly and keep bad company. Praising them when they outscore everyone else can easily discourage their growth. Educators need to start complimenting students who outperform their previous attempts.

If a kid was struggling with a math concept last semester but has since improved, encourage them to keep pushing. That way, they will learn hard work and resilience, two important skills that will come in handy later in life. Also, remember not to dwell too much on past glory. Teach the learners to focus on their next step because that is the surest way of making progress.

3. Spend Purposeful Time Outside the Classroom

To ensure the physical and cognitive growth of your students, it is important that educators also insist on spending a purposeful time outside the classroom. This can be through fun outdoor activities, such as camping, hiking, going on biking expeditions, or learning how to put together a camping tent. All of these activities can stimulate teamwork, a needed recreational time, and also gives your students the sense that their growth and learning is not tied down to the classroom as a physical object.

4. Encourage Time Management and Organization

Teach your students about the importance of prioritizing tasks and managing time effectively. Kids are easily distracted by peer pressure, TV, among others, but that will not be the case if they have a timetable to follow. Help them to organize their school work, how to spare time for homework or work out, and how to revise their notes. These organizational and time management skills will help them grow into responsible adults and great corporate managers.

4. Inspirational Posters

Anchor charts around the classroom as reminders of the importance of authentic learning and the need for developing a growth mindset. The charts should feature images, words, and phrases that inspire the kids to grow. Think of quotes from successful business leaders, stories of popular athletes, and even former students who overcame the same challenges your students are going through now. Let the kids know that in spite of the initial failures and struggles that many successful people have had to go through, they still made it in life thanks to their growth mindset and determination for a bigger change.

5. Encourage Curiosity

Being curious about something is what drives learners to find clarity and urgency in different aspects of life. Without it, it can never be created. It is through encouraging kids to ask you thought-provoking questions and allowing them to experiment on different hypotheses that they will get the motivation and purpose for designing something. A study suggests that students maintaining their curiosity is how they truly immerse themselves in their studies, and that’s how growth happens.

You can encourage curiosity in the simplest ways possible. For instance, you can introduce the concept of seed germination and growth through a small indoor garnered project. Planting the seeds, taking care of them, and anticipating the moment they bloom can greatly encourage their curiosity. If your classroom doesn’t get enough sunlight, you can ask your school to invest in some grow lights, that will not only compensate for the lack of natural light but will also speed up the entire process. This can make the curiosity-filled learning effective and time-efficient.

Conclusion: Aiding Student Growth

There are tons of inherent benefits of developing a growth mindset, both for kids and adults. As a teacher, you will only succeed in aiding your learners to grow by encouraging them to push through their comfort zones to grasp new concepts regardless of how tough they could be. You will need to be patient with them because growth doesn’t happen instantaneously.

Technology is changing the dynamics of everything, including education. Although many people still rely on traditional methods of learning, but one cannot deny the importance and benefits of e-learning. Education system is revolutionized and now the online education systems are the platforms for the future.

Use of technology in the education system expands course offerings, experiences and learning materials. Virtual schools have increased the student’s productivity, reduced the cost associated with the undergoing program. For example, now you can learn French just by attending online classes without being physically present in an actual classroom.

There are some learning websites which demand a certain amount of money for subscription but still that amount is less than which you pay for a regular course. On the contrary, open educational resources are also available where learning and research resources that reside in the public domain are freely available to anyone over the web. For example, now the professors of Harvard are uploading lectures on different platforms. So today, Harvard is accessible to many people in a way no one would even have imagined 50 years ago. This advancement in education system and its accessibility is possible only because of technology.

Within all levels of education, blended learning programs are being used that combine online and face-to-face interaction. Students access online material outside the classroom as their homework and then apply this new knowledge in the classroom by engaging in creative discussions or group work projects. Even in a traditional classroom environment, technology is being used like showing videos or images on a particular topic to understand things better.

“As we continue our research, the best places for education will bring people, technology and space together in innovative ways. If you think of classrooms as places where knowledge gets created instead of consumed, they have similarities to innovation studios where flexibility is built in. More than ever, we are seeing the need for classrooms to become highly flexible spaces that support the new behaviours of learning that are the direct result of new knowledge.” (universitybusiness.co.uk)

Technology has made education accessible to everybody. Those who cannot afford proper schooling can learn the same things online. It also increases the productivity by providing the comfort of home; you do not have to go anywhere; you can learn whatever you want and whenever you want. It provides self-paced learning, when you enroll in a traditional college program, you will have to forget about work, hobbies and even family: Studying must be your priority.

This is why many students who have financial responsibilities or are single parents decide to leave their education. A self-paced system enables them to make progress with rhythm that suits them. If you have a day job, you can study at night. That is an advantage that traditional education system cannot beat. Because of this, the literacy rate has increased.

There is one more advantage of self-paced learning and that is, it increases the productivity of the learner. In a traditional classroom, all students are taught at a same pace but in online learning, one can acquire as much information as one wants according to his capabilities. In online learning, you are the master of your own education. As your interaction is with people with people across the globe, it widens your perspective. Being exposed to new ideas from professionals in other countries may spark creativity of your own.

This type of education has grown over the last few years and has experienced mainstream acceptance. With an online class, one gets to control learning environment which ultimately helps to develop a deeper understanding. New methods of learning provide them with options that suit them, not the other way round. It makes the education liberating, not limiting.

Globally, over 1.2 billion children are out of the classroom. Wang Tao, Vice President of Tencent Cloud and Tencent Education says that he believes that the integration of information technology in education will be further accelerated and that online education will eventually become an integral component of school education. The future of online education looks promising and opens education opportunities to a larger section of the population than ever before.

It’s never too early to start thinking about your child’s future. While the job market will change to accommodate new coming generations, some things will always stay the same – like the importance of networking.

Today, 88% of professionals consider networking to be crucial to a thriving career. Knowing this, you should never underestimate the power of connections. Sometimes, it’s all about the people you know.

However, networking does have the potential to pamper you with benefits to reap far outside the professional realm. Professionally connecting can teach you powerful communication and other soft skills that may cushion your social life comfortably. Now is the time to begin instilling the importance of networking into your child’s growth mentality. This way, they can be comfortable enough to siege various networking opportunities productive for their future once entering college.

For example: by teaching your kids to be social now, they may be interested in non-conventional social activities, such as joining Greek life. Unbeknownst to most, Greek life can be an educationally enriching process for many. Having committees, meetings, and executive boards, members of fraternities and sororities take on many responsibilities and tasks teaching them great business. Outside of this, Greek life organizations also give students the opportunity to improve on how they participate in teamwork, prioritize community service, and communicate. On top of that, students who were members of Greek organizations prove to be happier and more engaged once entering the workforce. In fact, 85% of Fortune 500 Executives are fraternity members.

There are many ways to go about networking: taking your child to attend job and career fairs, introducing them to your colleagues needing interns and shadowers, get them a mentor, or even helping them build a LinkedIn profile once of age. Regardless of your approach, meeting people is a crucial value of higher education – and education overall. Prepare your children for their future of work while they’re still obtaining an education. This way, they’ll be ready for whatever the job market has to throw at them. More information on ways to network below:

Source: Online Schools Center

It can be challenging to create the ideal workstation for your students. Even the most ergonomically designed settings have plenty of distractions. Today, technology is among the biggest offenders. In some cases, it’s technology that stalls students from beginning their work.

In other cases, it’s technology that diverts the students’ attention away from their work once after they’ve finally obtained focus. Video games, push notifications, you name it. These are all technological features that are distracting to educational modes. However, lowered student performance is not the only result that can stem from an intrusive work environment. 

Distractions can lead students to stress and anxiety, condition them into a mindset that deprioritizes education, and even influence them to lose interest in their studies. Still, our society is heavily reliant on technology, so ridding screens from educational settings isn’t the best solution. 

Perhaps learning the long-lost art of concentration can assist in remediation, as well as taking some time to understand how the role of sleep contributes to productivity. Mind wandering is so natural that we often don’t even realize we’re drifting focus. 

A study by Microsoft Canada found that our average attention span is 1 second less than that of a goldfish! 8 seconds! Furthermore, The Journal of Neuroscience found that continued lack of sleep could destroy our brain cells. For example, when mice are deprived of sleep, neurons in their brains begin to die. 

Although distractions are impossible to completely vanish, simple steps can point your students in the direction of success. Take a look at the infographic below for a complete reference guide on how to help students focus better.

Source: NonProfit Colleges Online