Friday, April 22, 2016

Teaching Tip #152



Teacherscribe’s Teaching Tip #152
Don’t let your limiting beliefs limit you or what you do in your class.
Limiting beliefs are those narratives (often lies) we tell ourselves to keep us safely tucked inside of our comfort zones.
Here is are a couple of examples of limiting beliefs - “I’m too old for that.”  Maybe so, but probably not.  At the age of 41 I ran my first 5K at Riverfest.  Was I too old? No.  Sure, I could have done a whole lot better when I was running hard when I was 25, but I still did it.  Back when I was 25 I was victim of another limiting belief: “I don’t have enough experience as a runner.”  Another limiting belief - “I’m just not creative.”  Bull shit.  If you have access to Pinterest there is no excuse for not being creative.
How do limiting beliefs affect teaching?
I used to fall victim to these when I first started teaching.  Earning my MA in English seemed so daunting.  There were all kinds of narratives I told myself - I need more experience before applying to grad school; I am not smart enough; I can’t possibly come up with a topic worthy of researching and then writing a thesis on; I don’t know a second language, so I will never earn my degree thanks to the language requirement . . .
But, thankfully, I bit the bullet and applied and spent a year at BSU and then a few years later finally finished my thesis.
Now I realized all of those limiting beliefs were just lies.
What other limiting beliefs do we hold that square us in when it comes to teaching?

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