Identify and Support the Growth Mindset

The growth mindset is a buzzword in education currently, being a focus in many educational circles. Understanding the growth mindset can be somewhat more challenging.

Here are some ways that we can support the growth mindset:

• Micro Goals: Have students set micro goals, especially for the complicated tasks or tasks that they struggle with. Setting micro goals can allow students to have bursts of success to keep them engaged and working towards the overall learning target.
• Encourage Optimism around Learning: Every time I hear a student exclaim their stupidity over missing a learning target it breaks my heart. As educators, we hope that all of students can learn and be successful. Being optimistic starts with us. We need to show the belief in what we are doing and what our students are capable of. In fact, the number one indicator of educational achievement, according to John Hattie's meta-analysis and subsequent works, he identified in The Applicability of Visible Learning in Higher Education (2015), that the number one factor determining the achievement of students is belief by the instructor of the student's ability. We need to start it and we need to support it our students with encouragement.
• Find Ways to Engage and Activate Student Minds: To engage students in a growth mindset, they must learn more about how they can increase the functionality of their own minds. Using these strategies, collected by Donna Wilson and Marcus Conyers for Edutopia, you can start to find more ways to engage and connect with the students. These ideas include pacing instruction, learning about paying attention, and more.
• Start Success Folders: Everyday, students experience success. We should start to gather the successes so that students can visualize their growth in something other than their grades. Donna Wilson and Marcus Conyers suggest developing a place to gather successes in this Edutopia piece.
• More Formative Assessment: One of my favorite features about formative assessment is that it does not have to be for a "grade." Instead, we can develop formative assessments that measure a student's growth instead of their grades. This always begs the question about goals in education and the importance of deadlines, but I would argue for the importance of learning as well.
• Focus on Feedback: What type of feedback do you provide your students?
• Voice and Choice: As teachers, we enjoy our jobs because, in most aspects, we have autonomy in how we teach the standards that are assigned to our classes. We have a voice and choice on how we teach the content. Our students, who are, I would argue, even more diverse in learning styles and backgrounds than most staffs, have little choice in how, what, and when they learn certain content. As educators, we can start provide these choices to our students by removing the one-size fits all methodology in education. While there may only be one way to skin a cat (I really don't know, I have never tried), there are usually multiple ways for us to assess a standard.
• Focus on the Process of Learning: Learning is a process. For instance, learning to walk was a process. One that, undoubtedly, was very frustrating for many of us as youths, but was necessary. After the struggle and the process, many of us are proficient at walking. The same goes for potty training. Learning to write. Learning to do math. Learning to write. Learning to read. Learning to do almost anything. But if you focus on the process of going through it, picking up the smaller pieces, and celebrating those little successes, you can start to build upon them and get better. We all do. I dare you to think of your first year in the classroom. Reflect some. How much progress have you made? Are you as good as you can be? Or is there still room for improvement? It is entirely a process.