Gabby here. One thing I’ve been coming back to time and time again this past year, be it endless COVID lifestyle navigations, trying out all of the things thrown at us as teachers (from always but especially these past two years), or as humans in our own lives is: the importance of changing our minds.

This year one of my big undercurrent goals is to nurture the acceptance and celebration of changing our minds.

Our kids have already been beyond exceptional at this and I think it will be easy to be in awe of and affirm them right from the jump of this school year.

One great example of this was Simone Biles changing her mind at the Olympics, doing what she needed to do to take care of herself. The backlash she received is an unfortunate excellent example of a lot of things (racism, sexism, etc.), but also of how rigid and how difficult it is for so many of us to accept... a person making a different choice.

Another example of this is the struggle with the Science of Reading researchers and what teachers have not been taught in our preparation programs. The gap between how we are largely teaching literacy nationally versus what decades of research are telling us about the most effective ways to support our students as readers are not easy to wrap our heads around. Re-learning how to approach literacy has been (for me) professionally, one of the most upsetting and fascinating shifts in my instruction and craft. And yet! When we know better, we do better. We change our minds.

Some ways I am going keep my insistence on the positives of mind-changing will be

to remind students (and ourselves! And families!) that when we change our minds we:

Are reflecting!
Through this reflection are knowing ourselves more and responding to that
We have received new information and reviewed it! (consider climate change data, or the Delta variant..)
We have stepped back and opened ourselves to a bigger picture (for example we’ve considered the harm of emphasizing rigid binaries and labels and trying to fit humans into boxes, upon re-examination in 2021, we are seeing that isn’t helpful to.. any of us)
That we are engaged in a process that feels difficult (like editing our writing) but demonstrates the highest level of thinking!
We are engaged in a process that also has the highest levels of social-emotional intelligence and communication skills as we work to regulate how we feel about the change, accept it, and share (if we need to) our change in thinking with others.

We can teach this and NURTURE the importance of changing our minds by:

Using prompts in assignments and discussions like: “I used to think... but now I am thinking..” or “There’s more...”
Celebrating and replying to student responses with the classic improv “Yes, AND..” and saying “I like the way you did another layer of analysis” (because that’s what it is!)
Modeling! Always modeling.
- Being out of touch as old teachers and then saying, “New take!” and giving students a think-aloud of how we have changed our minds on something we have tried with them or said that we have re-assessed.
  - That can sound like: ‘I changed my mind. I’ve seen how hard we are working and it is Friday and we could use an earlier break’
  - Or, “I was going to jump in and speak- but I changed my mind, I’m going to pass it back to Ayush and hear more!”
  - Or, “We tried out this strategy, and based on what I’ve seen and the data I’ve collected it didn’t work for us. Let’s try another way!” This is also a way to integrate data collection/Math into a conversation or begin a lesson. We’ve talked about this before with the value of Math thinking and math discussions and changing our minds and adding to how we solve and consider problems fits so nicely into nurturing this.
- Routines are important but we can highlight how often we change our minds as teachers and provide a few thoughts/examples (maybe not all the time they’d get whiplash!! Teachers make 34848272733 decisions a day!!!)
Naming that things are changing all of the time. We do this often in our conversations about justice-oriented issues because it’s just factual. Terminology/ vocabulary has developed as people name concepts (ie “microaggressions”), and what has been considered “acceptable” has shifted year after year as we dig into how to be a more just society. To sincerely prepare our students for the world they are inheriting and creating, one of the best skills they can have is to be able to be curious, adapt, and be flexible with the new knowledge that comes their way! (doesn’t this sounds like the crux of Science? Learning in general??!) I know I am saying nothing new, but I think it’s incredible how easy it is to lose sight of where we are headed/ some of the deeper skills teaching and learning requirements and investigate the ways we are actually squashing it in our rapport and interactions.

WHEN TO TRIPLE CELEBRATE!!!

Whenever our students/ anyone in our community changes their minds! This could happen in so many ways and all the time in our classrooms!

My brain currently goes to our tougher big emotions moments that we don’t always frame positively but should, so here are few examples of those:

This can look like they changed their mind - and realized they need a longer break and it helped them further de-escalate.
They changed their mind and decided not to hit when they wanted to while angry, maybe they stormed out of the classroom or did something lower level instead. Cheers for that! And extra, extra cheers for claiming a break or using another tool!
They were going to shout while upset and chose to pause/ breathe/ wait until calmer instead.
They said “Nevermind”. We want to hear our student’s voices! But sometimes this nevermind is a great win for being kind to themselves or others and is some exceptional self-editing growth and mind-changing!

Finally, while this video isn’t exactly about changing our mind exactly, it is a nice zoom in and out of how we can shift around and be flexible with our perspectives, and how powerful that can be. It’s got a nice dose of honoring how we are all always growing and changing and making room for that for ourselves and others: Hope in Every Box.

Be well, and bravo to you for all the ways you will change your mind this year! You are rocking it however you are doing it. And when you learn more and make adjustments, you’ll be rocking it that way, too. Onwards!