I’ve cried several times as I’ve read through Carol Dweck’s Mindsets. I’ve also laughed and smiled and fist pumped and hoo-rahed and had this overwhelming sense of hope – real hope that is based on truth and possibilities not just wishful thinking and dreaming hope.
I’ve cried at opportunities I missed with students who thought they were less than because school was such a struggle (and since school wasn’t a struggle for me and I was entrenched in the fixed mindset for the majority of my life and still often am – I know that not purposefully, but nonetheless I fed that mindset). I cried because while I had to get out of a toxic situation, I wish I could go back and tell my students exactly why I was leaving and that it had nothing to do with them. I wish I had given each of them something more than just being the teacher who looped with us for three years and then left us with teachers who don’t care as much and don’t know us so personally.
I’ve cried at my own missed opportunities. Budding math major and computer science engineer, when Calculus III and Physics coincided instead of pushing through and retaking if necessary, I folded. I said, well that was obviously beyond my ability and what was I thinking I could do that kind of work. I made excuses – I couldn’t understand my Indian professor, I found out and got glasses halfway through the semester when I was already failing both classes.
I cried because I allowed the naysayers who kept saying a girl good at math was an oxymoron. The sister good at math, the brother good at literature – growing up we jokingly said we had got some of our boyness/girlness mixed up – – but isn’t that thought in and of itself part of the problem.
I’m still in the middle of reading and laughing and crying and fist-pumping. I’m also reading Daniel Pink’s Drive and Sylvia Martinez & Gary Stager’s Invent to Learn and Larmer, Mergendoller, & Boss’s Setting the Standard for Project Based Learning. I decided to try the Winston Churchill approach this week. I heard he had pedestals or podiums in his library and would read about five to ten minutes in each book taking notes before moving onto the next one making a circuit. I’m convinced he would have been drugged with ADD or ADHD medicine today (a topic for another day). I don’t have pedestals or a massive library or a secretary to come behind and type up the notes and file them away (wishful thinking for a future time) – but it has been interesting to read a chapter or two in each book. I can’t help but make connections between them.
Tinkering, Making, Project Based Learning, Genius Hour, 20% Time, Teaching like a Pirate, Creating innovators and inquirers, Educational Technology, Intrinsic Motivation, the Growth Mindset – these are all intricately connected. You adopt the others because you understand what a growth mindset is and does. You understand that intrinsic motivation – that motivation to succeed because it feels good – flourishes when you have a growth mindset. You understand that tinkering, making, project based learning, genius hour, 20% time, teaching like a pirate, creating innovators and inquirers, educational technology, etc – all flourish in a growth mindset and help a growth mindset to flourish.
I am hopeful. I began learning about the two mindsets about four or so years ago. I immediately recognized I had a fixed mindset and set about changing it. I still find myself mired in the fixed at times. But I also know that I am getting better. Actually reading Dweck’s and Pink’s books is already making a huge difference. I can begin to see the path to my goals and dreams and not just the goals and dreams. And I find myself reworking and clarifying those goals and dreams.
Part of my dream is to eradicate the kind of thinking that says the maker/pbl/flipped classroom isn’t for all students – especially those struggling, inner city, etc type of students (students I think who would most benefit from this type of classroom). I’ve heard too often that they lack motivation but to me it’s the chicken and the egg scenario. Do they lack motivation and therefore need more structure or do they lack motivation because they’ve had too much structure? Have we killed their natural curiosity? Have we given them so many labels that self-fulfilling prophecy, they are living up to those labels?
My goal this year apart from the flipping and tinkering and pbl and genius hour and ed tech and etc etc etc, is to stop praising ability and start praising only effort. This will take much mindfulness which all my teachers out there know can be so difficult with all the multitasking we’re already doing. It’s okay if I occasionally slip up, I can learn from those mistakes.
I read a somewhat crass & irreverent, but very funny and poignant article recently (5 Things that should be taught in every school). One thing he spoke about was the need to teach self-awareness or I kept saying meta-cognition – the ability to think about your thinking, to feel about your feelings – – I read the same thing in Martinez & Stager – thinking about thinking. I’m sure I read something similar when I was going through my Master’s. It’s the impetus behind the whole think aloud strategy. I bring this up at the end because it’s caused me to pause and think about my own thinking. Why do I get so mired in the fixed mindset?
And that will be next on the agenda. Why do I get so mired and how can I change it? Hopefully, my own meta-cognition and grappling will help someone else.