Visualizing Growth

“You’ve grown up so much!” we tell children at this time of year. As the school year concludes, we wish we could find words to let them know how amazing their growth has been. No matter what their age, they are in many ways different people than they were when they entered the classroom last fall.



Teachers often try to articulate the qualities individual students have developed, but it can be hard to choose words that have meaning for the child.

Room 8 teacher Chloe Gilmore had an epiphany as she thought deeply about how to give students a glimpse of the people they are becoming. She purchased eight face-sized mirrors on Amazon and placed them at different heights on all three tiers of the school.

Chloe surrounded each mirror with a sentence describing a special individual, like “This person is kind,” or, “This person is a good friend.” She focused on concepts the children would understand.

Her mirrors invite children of all ages to try on a positive description of themselves.

One mother saw her second-grade son flexing his muscles in front of one of the mirrors. He was reading the description, “I am strong.” Asking himself if he looks strong is different than having an adult say, “Look how strong you are.” He’s making his own determination.

How wonderful when children are invited at an early age to look in a mirror and reflect on their own feelings about themselves rather than comparing themselves to others.

Developmentally, mirrors are related to identity formation. At around the age of 18 months, children begin to recognize that the person in the looking glass isn’t a fun friend they can wave to but is actually themselves.

As they grow, children love using mirrors to try out different facets of themselves—smiling, frowning, and donning costumes or crazy hair dos. The fascination with the mirror and their physical appearance is part of building an identity.

However, the mirrors placed so lovingly around the school have a different goal. They invite children to go beyond their physical appearance and look at their visage with their hearts. What does a kind face look like? It looks like you. What a discovery!

Try taking a tour of the mirrors around school with your child and using the positive words to point out ways they have grown. Ultimately, the most important parts of this growth have less to do with the rigor of learning phonics or fractions and more to do with sensing the kind of person they want to become.