Breaking Through the Glass Ceiling

breaking the glass ceiling

After the first Face-to-Face session, many people talked about feeling overwhelmed. We met  inspiring educators and were shown awesome tools. We were sent on our way to explore and connect. I think at the time I was a bit too stunned to feel anything. My mind felt flooded. In a good way. Twitter? Diigo? Google +? WordPress? I needed to sift through all of the information that I had gathered, and I wasn’t quite sure where to begin.

I felt a bit stuck. I found myself reflecting more intentionally, searching for a blogging topic. What is unique about the way I teach? What tools do I use that work? What are the struggles that I have in my classroom? What can I share? My ideas became partially developed titles saved in my phone:

  1. Renewing my faith in buzz words: growth mindset vs fixed mindset.
  2. Flipping my classroom: when it works, it’s beautiful.
  3. Jumping over hurdles and through hoops in an attempt to implement technology.
  4. Goodbye Facebook, Hello Twitter.

And that is as far as I got. “Cohort Blog” has been on my to-do list for a long time and has nagged at me, but I couldn’t bring myself to log in and start writing.

What was holding me back? I told myself that I needed a lot of time to process. I told myself that I wasn’t a strong writer and that it would be a tedious process to write it and perfect it before publishing. I worried about what picture I would include. I was concerned that I wouldn’t have enough to say or that my thoughts were not important.

Then it struck me! I had a fixed mindset about blogging- gah!

dweck_mindset

I was avoiding the challenge. I was intimidated by the success of others. I feared criticism.

What I needed to do was change my mindset. And that I did. So here I am, putting myself out there. I am embracing the challenge. I am going to find inspiration in the greatness of others. I am going to learn from the criticism and persist in the face of setbacks. I am going to have a growth mindset about blogging.

I just needed to do it-to break the glass ceiling- to get the first one out there.

Glass ceiling broken. Whew! Here’s to letting my ideas flow “up” into the blogosphere.

Is a fixed mindset holding you back from accomplishing something on your to-do-list? How can you change your thinking to help you to break through the glass ceiling?

4 thoughts on “Breaking Through the Glass Ceiling

  1. Love this post!!

    You’ve echoed a lot of sentiments of other members, and prompted a great reflection on how to apply GMset to oneself, and in one’s own practice.

    Personally, I’ll try to answer your question in this way… I would approach you particular situation and try to think of ways to get me to my end goal. Wait…what is my end goal? “I want to shift my practice to reflect 21st century learning skills of Communication, Collaboration, Critical thinking, and Creativity.”

    I am a big fan of reframing language along the lines of the Growth Mindset. So, “what am I missing?” Answer: the tools to connect and communicate
    Then, “who can I learn from?” Answer: cohort 21 members that I can collaborate with
    Then again, “How can I rethink the way I teach?” Answer: critically think about the value of adding in EdTech through the application of different frameworks (this is what we will be doing on Nov. 22nd…Perfect!)
    Finally (yeah, right!), “In what ways can I make this my own journey?” Answer: be creative and apply it to what you think is most important to you and your school’s mission.

    There are a lot of ideas floating around regarding Growth Mindset, and I know that more than a few Cohort 21 members are exploring it already. You’ll have lots of ppl to learn from and lots of resources to share with them as well.

    Thanks for a great post and welcome to the other side of the proverbial class ceiling!

    garth.

  2. I believe it is actually very important for everyone to know somehow that they are really not alone in these internal struggles. It is so common to have a fixed mindset when one is insecure about blogging, or whatever it may be, but reading this post lifts off a little of the pressure. Just knowing that you experience this feeling as much as everyone else, and that you are putting it out there, helps a lot. So thank you!

  3. Garth summed it up nicely. I will echo what @alanmacinnis said in the reflection movie we showed in the first face 2 face session. Don’t be afraid to “put yourself” out there. Take the leap and you may inspire someone else to do the same while at the same time creating new connections and opportunities for yourself.

    P.S – I’ll bring your vest on Sat 🙂

  4. Fabulous post! Your thoughts about putting yourself out there are common to new bloggers (students too). You have inspired me to get back at it and re-write the script of my internal voice about writing/blogging. Thanks for sharing.

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