Educator Summit

Open Mind Africa held its inaugural Educator Summit on July 21, 2018. The topic was Growth Mindset and all educators from the three affiliated schools were invited to attend. The core content of the summit was provided by Transforming Education and led by Kathleen Prevost. Joanne Binns, Joseph Adams, and Andrew Gordon contributed to the development of the program.

About a third of the participants had heard of the term growth mindset previously. The concept of growth mindset was introduced and teachers shared examples of learning from their own lives. The summit included lots of meaningful participation with most of the attendees contributing to the group discussions. The bulk of the workshop focused on examples of growth mindset in teaching, and how to apply growth mindset strategies in the classroom. Specifically the use of praise was explored in detail. Educators explored looking at praise through this lens and several lively conversations took place. In the final segment of the workshop, participants worked in small groups to come up with ways to apply growth mindset on their own campuses.

Feedback from the summit was very positive. All of the teachers expressed interest in joining an online Community of Practice group to continue sharing ideas about growth mindset and how it can be fostered through the use of praise. There are plans to host this via a closed Facebook group at the start of the coming school year and maintain the exchange throughout the year.

Based on the success of the inaugural Educator Summit, OMA plans to continue hosting these types of trainings with as many educators as possible.