Painting a Mindset

Junior School – September 3, 2015
During the first week of September, while CDS students and their families enjoyed one final week of summer vacation, their teachers were back on campus preparing for the upcoming school year. In the Junior School, faculty members attended meetings, organized classrooms, created dynamic and engaging bulletin boards and displays and planned curricular and co-curricular experiences – your faculty’s minds were busy at work – doing the things that help to define the CDS Education. At the conclusion of this busy, intense and energetic week, the teachers of the Junior School were invited to a meeting, held in the MPR.
Unlike the other meetings that week, we were unaware of the nature of this gathering.
We were each instructed to sit down at a table in front of a blank canvas. An assortment of brushes and a palate of acrylic paint accompanied each canvas. A single painting was on display at the front of the room – a tree in autumn colours set in a field of green. A professional painter from the entertainment company Paint Night proceeded to “teach” us to attempt to paint our own rendition of this painting.

The CDS faculty ‘artists’ (those with experience in visual arts) buzzed with excitement. Others with less experience were open to the idea, albeit anxious. Some of us remained preoccupied with thoughts of our back-to-school To Do lists.
In June of 2015, the Junior School faculty was provided with two books for summer reading:
  • Mindset: The New Psychology of Success by Carol S. Dweck PhD
  • Mindsets in the Classroom by Mary Cay Ricci
Each book addresses the notion of growth mindsets – the belief that one’s intelligence can be grown or developed with persistence, effort and a focus on learning. These books also discuss our challenge to change fixed mindsets – the belief system that suggests that a person has a predetermined amount of intelligence, skills or talents.

As such, one can see that a student may develop and benefit from a growth mindset.

The time we spent painting our ‘countryscape’ served to make our mindset-focused professional reading real. The painting activity placed us in a position to learn or discover new abilities, or to demonstrate and apply a talent that we’d established earlier in our lives.

It also provided us timely professional perspective, and an experience that would help us to empathize with our students. We were reminded of the feelings and emotions our students might feel heading into the unknown, exciting, terrifying, exhilarating and potentially unsettling territory of “going back to school.” It served to elevate our awareness and help instill confidence and self-awareness in our students; for us to mentor, coach and encourage them to develop their own growth mindsets.

With our ‘masterpieces’ adorning the classrooms and office space throughout the Junior School as pleasant reminders, we embarked on our exciting new school year, with our minds set toward growth.

Submitted by Mark Burleigh, Physical & Health Education Faculty
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Land Acknowledgment

CDS wishes to recognize and acknowledge the land on which the school operates. For thousands of years, these have been the traditional lands of the Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation. We also recognize the traditional territory of the Huron-Wendat, Anishinaabe and the Haudenosaunee peoples who also shared this land.  CDS respects the relationship with these lands and recognizes that our connection can be strengthened by our continued relationship with all First Nations, by acknowledging our shared responsibility to respect and care for these lands and waters for future generations.

School Information

13415 Dufferin Street King, Ontario L7B 1K5 
(905) 833-1220 

communications@cds.on.ca
admissions@cds.on.ca

Founded in 1972, The Country Day School is a co-educational private school offering programs in JK-12 and located on 100 acres north of Toronto in King.