We had to watch a TED talk about the power in believing that you can improve. In the TED talk, Dweck mentioned using the phrase “Not Yet” in replacement of a failed class grade, in attempts to show that the student did not fail, but is not quite ready to pass yet. As I annotated the written dialogue of the talk, I wrote a lot about how I felt that I didn’t believe using that phrase was the best thing to do. In my opinion, I think that “not yet” will let the student believe that slacking in a class is okay because they will get there eventually. I believe we should stick to the regular grading process.
When I annotated Dweck’s work, I wrote a lot of my opinions on the side, whether I was agreeing with her or disagreeing with her. I focused a lot on the word’s ‘Not Yet’ and my opinions changed a lot throughout the piece. At the beginning, I underlined that phrase and another which said, “if you get a failing grade, you think, I’m nothing, I’m nowhere.” To both of these statements I said that I agreed with what Dweck was saying, and that it is true that most individuals shut down after failing one attempt. However, as I kept reading, for some reason, my opinion started to change. I still focused on the Not Yet point of the piece but I viewed it in a negative way. I wrote about how I thought the words “not yet” would lead to people believing that it is acceptable to go at a slow pace while learning, and slacking off because eventually you’ll graduate. I also asked a lot of questions about some of the things Dweck said because I didn’t necessarily believe all that was said.
