Building a Culture of Success by Changing Our Mindsets in the Classroom
It does not matter how slowly you go so long as you do
not stop – Confucius
Most of the important things in the world have been
accomplished by people who have kept on trying when there seemed no hope at all - Dale
Carnegie
When students believe that dedication and hard work
can change their performance in school, they grow to become resilient,
successful students (Ricci, 2013). As educators, our role becomes fostering
this belief among the students in our classroom and school. This belief is
making a strong push in schools today and is called growth mindset.
Growth Mindset, by definition, is the ability for students to persevere when faced with challenges and
adversity by way of grit in order to attain long-term goals (Hochanadel &
Finamore, 2015). The opposite of this is a fixed mindset, in which learners believe their success is a result of their innate abilities, and when they encounter difficulties, feel baffled and powerless (Drake, 2014). I agree fully with this definition of a growth mindset and it’s importance to
educators and learners today. It is about changing the fixed mindset culture that currently exists in our schools, and along with it changing the definition of success. From
this point of view, students should no longer view success as getting a 90%,
but rather see success as how much they were able to learn, how were they able to challenge
themselves when they came across a concept or idea they may not have understood, or push themselves further when they grasped the subject matter.
As educators we must create a culture in
which failure, taking risks, answering questions, and going outside of your
norm or comfort zone is not only okay, but encouraged. When looking at the
growth mindset, I look back to all of the times throughout my years in school where I gave up on a word problem or gave up on an idea I could not
conceptualize, but it was okay because I knew I was going to do well on the
next test or quiz. This was me going through K-12 with a fixed mindset, and quite honestly existed until my 3rd year of university. As a prospective educator it is becoming more and more
apparent how much the culture of success needs to be changed. Growth mindset not only gives hope for the students unmotivated by certain subjects, concepts, or ideas, but it also humbles those students who do score well as it pushes them to even further their knowledge, as seen in this 2015 study by Anindito Aditomo.
In order to implement this new idea of how to be
successful in the classroom, I believe that educators must build quality and
genuine relations with their students. Students need to know that their
educators genuinely care about them, because as Rita Pierson says in the
following video, “Kids don’t learn from people they don’t like”. I personally, remember my favourite teachers as the one's that you could tell, genuinely cared. Mrs. Pierson also speaks to her own experience implementing a culture of success via the growth
mindset, speaking to giving a student a plus two rather than a minus eighteen
on a test. Mrs. Pierson has changed the way I personally look at classroom dynamics and I hope anyone reading this takes the 8 minutes to watch her speak.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SFnMTHhKdkw
The switch in culture within a classroom can be a daunting task for teachers who have already developed their own culture. I think what is most important for prospective educators like myself, is that we find resources to help us implement this new culture, starting now. If we don't, we all know the adage, "you will teach they way you have been taught", which is something that cannot happen if we want to create an environment of creative, resilient young minds. Mindsetonline.com and the book Mindsets in the Classroom by Mary Ricci (2013), which can be found here, lists step by step how to properly implement the growth mindset in your classroom, which makes it easy to follow for educators and prospective educators alike.
From how I view the growth mindset model, education
isn’t about looking at students work and telling them what floor the elevator
dropped them off at, but rather letting them know that they’re on a set of
stairs. It doesn’t matter what stair they are on, as long as they’re on the
staircase and willing to put in the work to keep climbing.
http://www.scriptmag.com/features/balls-of-steel-magic-trick-to-selling-a-screenplay
Cheers and until next time,
Mr. Tiessen
Aditomo, A. a.
(2015). Students' Response to Academic Setback: "Growth Mindset" as a Buffer Against
Demotivation. International Journal Of Educational
Psychology, 4(2), 198-222. doi:10.17583/ijep.2015.1482
Drake,
S. M., Reid, J. L., & Kolohon, W. (2014). Interweaving Curriculum
and Classroom Assessment: Engaging the 21st Century
Learner. Don Mills, ON:Oxford University Press.
Hochanadel,
A., & Finamore, D. (2015). Fixed and Growth Mindset in Education and How Grit Helps Students Persist in
the Face of Adversity. Journal Of International
Education Research, 11(1), 47-50.
Ricci,
M. C. (2013). Mindsets in the classroom: Building a culture of success and student achievement in schools.
Sourcebooks, Inc..
