“I’m so stupid. I’ll never get this!” The message looped inside Kent’s mind, its echoes blinding him to any way forward. When his teacher came by, she assumed he was daydreaming and not giving the practice exercises any effort. A reprimand followed, Kent looked back at the work in front of him, and the audio loop returned. “I’m stupid,” it reverberated. “I’ll never get this.”
In addition to imagination, fostering students’ reflection abilities helps them develop resilience. We can equip students to think their ways out of defeat and into healthy mind states where learning — deep learning, in fact — can happen.