Growth Mindset--Continued

“It is hard to fail, but it is worse never to have tried to succeed.” (Theodore Roosevelt) I liked how the high school in Chicago labeled the students that had not met their units to graduate as “Not Yet” instead of FAILED.  “Not Yet” was considered a learning curve that gave path to the future.  That is awesome!  I hope this encouraged those students to work harder to graduate.  The video gave me so much insight of the “Power of Yet” which needs to be taught, inspired, encouraged, and motivated into today’s students.  We, as educators and parents have to instill this power into them. Students are too young to comprehend that not only are they preparing for now but to develop strategies that will allow them to succeed for challenges in the future.  This power has to be instill not only for the affluent but also to the poor students.  I was lucky to have good parents that instilled this power of yet, not knowing why it was important.  It is a must that all students’ brains be set on fire with questions, solutions, challenges, strategies and processes that will make them resilience.

I strongly believe that I was raised with this concept because if I had relied on a fixed mindset, I would never had succeeded in life—-especially growing up in the 60’s as a Hispanic.  Growing up with white high school counselors who wanted to make the decisions for our careers.  I don’t want to offend anyone because my husband is white.  If our parents did not go to college, they were recommending that we seek careers that did not require college.  This is one of the reasons why adopting the growth mindset changed the way I learned and still learning.  Overcoming obstacles because of height or my parents not attending college forced me to learn strategies to increase my intelligence.  If I failed at first, I knew I was going to stop and give up.  So, I had to set my brain on fire by finding the processes on my own.  Often, I stumbled but the hunger for learning was always with me which I in turn, gave it to my children, students and now my grandchildren.

Persons/students that do accept feedback with a growth mindset will eventually have trouble succeeding in any endeavor they undertake.  One should not be defensive when receiving feedback but see it, as a way to develop and improve one’s skills. Feedback should be an opportunity for improvement (feedback.tips)  As Briceno (2012) stressed when giving students feedback, don’t just say “wow, good score” but say “you really tried hard”.  This will give them confident on continuing to work through processes.

Growth mindset can help limit a person’s preoccupation with grades by focusing on the strengths and weaknesses of how that certain grade was obtained.  By knowing their strengths, they can be more motivated to set higher goals to achieve at a higher level.  They can search for how they can bring the grades up instead of just moping over the low grades. Studying the key words on the missed questions can better prepare them for future similar question.  Teachers need to train students to find the errors they missed so they can find strategies to be more knowledgeable in that concept.

It is unbelievable on the numerous resources one can use to learn more about the growth mindset.  I am going to list some of them that can be use to train students, teachers and any employee in any field.

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• This is an excellent music video that all students should view which is entitled “Teach Me Like You Do”.

          https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RqNR4g02Gvs&pbjreload=10

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