Building a Culture of Success by Changing Our Mindsets in the Classroom

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 21^st 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..