More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
Why, Schwartz asks, should the low standards of these future teachers be honored above the needs of the children they will one day teach?
The great teachers believe in the growth of the intellect and talent, and they are fascinated with the process of learning.
She forged a contract with them. “I know most of you can’t spell your name. You don’t know the alphabet, you don’t know how to read, you don’t know homonyms or how to syllabicate. I promise you that you will. None of you has ever failed. School may have failed you. Well, goodbye to failure, children. Welcome to success. You will read hard books in here and understand what you read. You will write every day….But you must help me to help you. If you don’t give anything, don’t expect anything. Success is not coming to you, you must come to it.”
DeLay’s husband always teased her about her “midwestern” belief that anything is possible. “Here is the empty prairie—let’s build a city.” That’s exactly why she loved teaching. For
When Benjamin Bloom studied his 120 world-class concert pianists, sculptors, swimmers, tennis players, mathematicians, and research neurologists, he found something fascinating. For most of them, their first teachers were incredibly warm and accepting. Not that they set low standards. Not at all, but they created an atmosphere of trust, not judgment. It was, “I’m going to teach you,” not “I’m going to judge your talent.”
Yet Collins maintained an extremely nurturing atmosphere. A very strict and disciplined one, but a loving one. Realizing that her students were coming from teachers who made a career of telling them what was wrong with them, she quickly made known her complete commitment to them as her students and as people.
“Challenge and nurture” describes DeLay’s approach, too. One of her former students expresses it this way: “That is part of Miss DeLay’s genius—to put people in the frame of mind where they can do their best….Very few teachers can actually get you to your ultimate potential. Miss DeLay has that gift. She challenges you at the same time that you feel you are being nurtured.”
His motto: “There are no shortcuts.” Collins echoes that idea as she tells her class, “There is no magic here. Mrs. Collins is no miracle worker. I do not walk on water, I do not part the sea. I just love children and work harder than a lot of people, and so will you.”
Growth-minded teachers tell students the truth and then give them the tools to close the gap. As Marva Collins said to a boy who was clowning around in class, “You are in sixth grade and your reading score is 1.1. I don’t hide your scores in a folder. I tell them to you so you know what you have to do. Now your clowning days are over.” Then they got down to work.
When teachers are judging them, students will sabotage the teacher by not trying. But when students understand that school is for them—a way for them to grow their minds—they do not insist on sabotaging themselves.
How can growth-minded teachers be so selfless, devoting untold hours to the worst students? Are they just saints? Is it reasonable to expect that everyone can become a saint? The answer is that they’re not entirely selfless. They love to learn. And teaching is a wonderful way to learn. About people and how they tick. About what you teach. About yourself. And about life.
“There’s an assumption,” he said, “that schools are for students’ learning. Well, why aren’t they just as much for teachers’ learning?” I never forgot that. In all of my teaching, I think about what I find fascinating and what I would love to learn more about. I use my teaching to grow, and that makes me, even after all these years, a fresh and eager teacher.
It’s been said that Dorothy DeLay was an extraordinary teacher because she was not interested in teaching. She was interested in learning.
It starts with the growth mindset—about yourself and about children. Not just lip service to the idea that all children can learn, but a deep desire to reach in and ignite the mind of every child.
He didn’t ask for mistake-free games. He didn’t demand that his players never lose. He asked for full preparation and full effort from them. “Did I win? Did I lose? Those are the wrong questions. The correct question is: Did I make my best effort?” If so, he says, “You may be outscored but you will never lose.”
He was not a softy. He did not tolerate coasting. If the players were coasting during practice, he turned out the lights and left: “Gentlemen, practice is over.” They had lost their opportunity to become better that day.
Was Wooden a genius, a magician able to turn mediocre players into champions? Actually, he admits that in terms of basketball tactics and strategies, he was quite average. What he was really good at was analyzing and motivating his players.
love–hate relationship with losing. Emotionally, it still made her feel sick. But she loved what it did. It forces everyone, players and coaches, to develop a more complete game. It was success that had become the enemy.
Summitt explained, “Success lulls you. It makes the most ambitious of us complacent and sloppy.”
Conclusion? Beware of success. It can knock you into a fixed mindset: “I won because I have talent. Therefore I will keep winning.” Success can infect a team or it can infect an individual. Alex Rodriguez, the baseball star, was not infected with success. “You never stay the same,” he says. “You either go one way or the other.”
A growth mindset is about believing people can develop their abilities. It’s that simple.
They can bask in their own wonderful qualities but they may never do the hard work of cultivating their own abilities or the abilities of their children or students.
Misunderstanding #2. Many people believe that a growth mindset is only about effort, especially praising effort.
The first important thing to remember here is that the process includes more than just effort.
This is the process we want them to appreciate: hard work, trying new strategies, and seeking input from others.
More than once, parents have said to me, “I praise my child’s effort but it’s not working.” I immediately ask, “Was your child actually trying hard?” “Well, not really,” comes the sheepish reply.
But a problem that’s of even greater concern to me is the fact that some teachers and coaches are using effort praise as a consolation prize when kids are not learning.
In all of our research on praise, we indeed praise the process, but we tie it to the outcome, that is, to children’s learning, progress, or achievements. Children need to understand that engaging in that process helped them learn.
But it doesn’t happen by simply telling them, “You can do anything.” It happens by helping them gain the skills and find the resources to make progress toward their goals.
We are in the business of helping kids thrive, not finding reasons why they can’t.
we’re finding something fascinating. Adults’ mindsets are in their heads and are not directly visible to children. Adults’ overt actions speak far louder, and this is what children are picking up on.
Even parents who hold a growth mindset can find themselves praising their child’s ability—and neglecting to focus on their child’s learning process.
In other words, every single day parents are teaching their children whether mistakes, obstacles, and setbacks are bad things or good things. The parents who treat them as good things are more likely to pass on a growth mindset to their children.
Third, passing on a growth mindset is about whether teachers are teaching for understanding or are simply asking students to memorize facts, rules, and procedures.
Research is showing that when teachers care about deeper understanding and work with students to achieve it, then students are more likely to belie...
This highlight has been truncated due to consecutive passage length restrictions.
Sadly, in this atmosphere many students are coming to equate learning with memorizing. I am hearing from many researchers and educators that students across the economic spectrum are becoming increasingly unable to grasp the difference between memorizing facts, rules, and procedures and truly understanding the concepts underlying the material. Aside from the bad news for growth mindsets, this also has disturbing implications for our nation. Great contributions to society are born of curiosity and deep understanding. If students no longer recognize and value deep learning, where will the great
...more
However, the moral of this story is that parents, teachers, and coaches pass on a growth mindset not by having a belief sitting in their heads but by embodying a growth mindset in their deeds: the way they praise (conveying the processes that lead to learning), the way they treat setbacks (as opportunities for learning), and the way they focus on deepening understanding (as the goal of learning).
Retweet summary.
In some of our studies, they just have to take the simplest action to make things better. But they don’t. These are the young children with the fixed mindset. When things go wrong, they feel powerless and incapable.
In the 1960s, psychiatrist Aaron Beck was working with his clients when he suddenly realized it was their beliefs that were causing their problems.
People with a growth mindset are also constantly monitoring what’s going on, but their internal monologue is not about judging themselves and others in this way.
they’re attuned to its implications for learning and constructive action: What can I learn from this?
Maggie’s internal monologue used to say: Don’t do it. Don’t take a writing class. Don’t share your writing with others. It’s not worth the risk. Your dream could be destroyed. Protect it. Now it says: Go for it. Make it happen. Develop your skills. Pursue your dream.
Jason’s internal monologue used to be: Win. Win. You have to win. Prove yourself. Everything depends on it. Now it’s: Observe. Learn. Improve. Become a better athlete.
But new research shows that the brain is more like a muscle—it changes and gets stronger when you use it. And scientists have been able to show just how the brain grows and gets stronger when you learn.
The mindset workshop put students in charge of their brains. Freed from the vise of the fixed mindset, Jimmy and others like him could now use their minds more freely and fully.
For example, they were taught that when they studied well and learned something, they transferred it from temporary storage (working memory) to more permanent storage (long-term memory).
“Yes the [B]rainology program helped a lot….Every time I thought about not doing work I remembered that my neurons could grow if I did do the work.”
“Look,” I said, “it’s not about you. That’s their job. Their job is to find every possible flaw. Your job is to learn from the critique and make your paper even better.” Within hours she was revising her paper, which was warmly accepted. She tells me: “I never felt judged again. Never.
But opening yourself up to growth makes you more yourself, not less. The growth-oriented scientists, artists, athletes, and CEOs we’ve looked at were far from humanoids going through the motions. They were people in the full flower of their individuality and potency.
Nobody scoffs at an honest plea for helpful feedback.
