The Growth Mindset

Well, parents of AP Human Geography students, this is the only blog post that you will have to read. While I hope you will read the entire book, I think I can explain how I apply the ideas from Mindset to my students in one shot.
The idea of a growth mindset verses a fixed mindset is not a difficult one to grasp. A growth mindset is one that values growth in all of its forms: mental, spiritual, social and physical. A willingness to learn is essential to grow in any of these areas. This willingness is what I call humility. By humility, I don't mean the self-depricating modesty in which you claim to be less than you really are. Actually, I believe a humble person is one who recognizes and accepts truth. This is a person who, if she is a very good skier, will tell you so. However, she does not do it in a way that elvates herself above others. It is not about being better than others or representing herself as somethinng that she is not. It is being the best she can be. She knows what makes her good but she also know wherein she is weak. She accepts those weaknesses and is committed to improve.
I love the example used in the book of infants learning to walk and talk. Maybe because I am watching it happen right now in my own home. These are some of the most diffficult tasks to master that any of us will undertake in our entire lifetime. In fact, the acquisition of language never ends. My wife recently shared a quote with me that said something like "All I know is what I have words for." Think about it. Can you know a thing without the vocabulary to explain it? I digress. The point is that children learn the most before they become aware that there is such a thing as failure and that it is thought to be bad. To the degree that we allow ourselves to fall victim to the judgements of our parents, bosses and peers is the same degree that we develop a fixed mindset. A fixed mindset influences us to think that excellence or success is not something that we attain because of the joy we get from learning something new and adding to our current abilities. Excellence becomes being better than the next guy. While this can be motivating, it is also frustrating and unsatisfying. There will always be someone better and I will never be happy in the struggle because, with the fixed mindset, happiness only comes when you win. If I perceive I won't win then I won't play at all. Then what have I gained? I lose sight of what could otherwise be a satisfying learning experience.
While I am Christian, I am drawn to Eastern religions because of their focus on mastery. Daoism and Zen Buddhism teach practitioners to focus on the present. A focus on the present precludes a passing judgement on the future. That means that if I am about to set out on a four mile run, I won't focus on anything be the current step and the sensations of breathing and seeing and feeling. Running (or any other hard thing) becomes loathsome because I judge it to be hard. What if I didn't judge it as anything other than a different set of sensations than I feel when I am sitting or walking.Usually, I lose the pleasure that I could have while I am doing it because I am so focused on the pleasure of having it over with. I like Hinduism because it teaches that my current circumstances were created by past thoughts and actions and future circumstances are being created by my current thoughts and actions.
Having established these ideas as a foundation, I can explain how I approach teaching and learning. The first thing that I want to do and that I would like your help with is to try and help students love to learn. I used to think that the way to do this was through making learning fun and entertaining. While I will always seek to find a more fun and interesting way to get an idea across, I do myself a disservice if I communicate the idea that learning is fun all by itself without some gimmick. I want students to understand that while doing research for a project might not be their favorite thing to do, it can be interesting, rewarding and yes even fun. It just depends on their mindset. When a person lets go of the idea that work is hard and hard is bad, then they free themselves to pursue many more things. I like to say that one sign of maturity is when you commit to do what is best even if it is hard.

When I was young, I was no different from most kids. I was not immune to the natural tendency to avoid pain. If I had to endure pain (like doing homework) then the way to do it was to get it over with as soon a possible, even if I had to cut corners. That meant that when it came to doing the bi-weekly vocabulary packet, I would wait until the night before it was due and then copy my friends. Instead of reading the entire novel, I would just read the Cliff's Notes. When it came time to take AP English, I balked. I heard it was hard and the teacher was mean. Did I do well in school? Sure, I got pretty good grades. However, when the stakes were high and I had to get a high score on the Graduate Records Examination in order to get into the schools of my choice, I was in trouble. I remember, taking a Kaplan course to prepare. The first practice test presented words that, for the most part, I had never seen before. I asked the instructor when I was supposed to have learned these words. She told me that these words were taken from American and European classical literature. If I had done my vocabulary packets and read those books in high school and college, I would have acquired those words as part of my own vocabulary. That was when I determined, that though it would take years, I would read those books and gain what I had lost. (Les Miserables is my favorite work of fiction) Still, I was still doing this with a bit of a fixed mindset. I was not a culturally literate adult. I was deficient and I would not be on par with other educated people until I had read what they had read. In the process, however, I found the majority of the books were very enjoyable and even if I didn't care for a particular novel, I understood why it was valuable in the canon of Western literature. This experience helped me to find the value of learning for learning's sake.

While I put great emphasis on passing the AP Human Geography test, I do so because I believe goals are important measures of where we are. Even more important than achieving a goal is the strain, struggle and striving to achieve it. It comes as no surprise that the students who pass the test are usually (but not always) the ones who consistenly do their homework and don't complain about it. While they may not be thrilled about a particular assignment or chapter, they frequently get excited after doing it because their world becomes broader when they see the relevance of the concept in the world around them. They begin to enjoy learning about why things are the way they are in the world around them. While they may not ask you to change the radio station to NPR or begin consistenly read the New York Times or the Economist or go to the library to check out Food Inc., to the extent that they do these kinds of things, they will begin to see the intrinsic value of learning not merely jumping through hoops to get a certain letter on a piece of paper.
Speaking of grades. The idealist in me wishes we didn't have them. They are never a real indicator of what a student learned (sometimes more, sometimes less). The pragmatist in me understands that they are a fact of life. Since they are not going away anytime soon, I should use them to accomplish my goals; namely, student acehievment. In the spirit of the growth mindset, I allow students to redo assignments, do test corrections and even retake different versions of chapter tests until they are satisfied with their score. It is usually a shock when they get their first test back. Percentages range from 30 to 70 percent. This is because while students may study the material (these are the ones who get 70 percent) the questions are meant to test their understanding of the concept. This often means that the students need to recognize the concept as it applies to some part of the world. In other words, the questions are not surface level recall questions that ask who, what when, where. They measure understanding of how and why. Since most questions on tests up to this point measure the former, it takes a while for students to learn how to think through a question; recognize the concept that it is testing and eliminate the answers that don't fit.
Half of their score on the AP exam comes from their writing Free Response Questions. There are usually three. The more of these questions they practice writing, the better they will get. The more they read, the more material they will have to write about. It is that simple. I will teach them the material and the skills. The more they review and practice, the better they will get. The more, they adopt a growth mindset, the easier and more enjoyable learning will become. If maturity is measured by a persons willingness to do hard things without complaint, then that is yet another hopefull outcome of this whole process.
Regardless of whether you buy into this whole line of thinking, the fact is that students who do the assigned work, redo work when it is sub-par and do test corrections are the ones who learn the most. The students who learn the most perform well on tests. Students who perform well on tests create opportunities for themselves by way of college acceptance and scholarships. The irony is that the students who learn to love to learn are the ones who get the best scores and the most scholarships.
I look forward to teaching your son or daughter this year. As difficult as it might seem at times, with very few exceptions students finish the year saying that while it was a challenge it was worth it.