As mothers, we understand one of the most critical components to our children’s young lives is their education. Since it’s time to ring in a new school year, the contributors at Fairfield County Moms Blog wanted to share some tips, tricks, and words of wisdom to help you through this exciting, yet stressful time. Be sure to keep a look out for our Education Series posts all this week!
Growth Mindset. I have to admit that I haven’t really dived into finding out more about education’s newest buzz word. True Confession: As a teacher, new buzz words sometimes make me roll my eyes. However, I just recently attended a super informative Writer’s Workshop training through my school. On the last day of the training some of the teachers were lamenting about children’s behaviors being on the decline these days. As a result we spent a bit of time talking about growth mindset. After a brief activity looking into growth mindset for the K-2 clientele, I realized I could use a little growth mindset learning of my own! Which got me thinking, since their mama is a bit of a perfectionist, my own children could totally benefit from this learning at home.
So, what is a growth mindset? According to Carol Dweck, the psychologist who has researched and written a book on this concept,
In a growth mindset, people believe that their most basic abilities can be developed through dedication and hard work—brains and talent are just the starting point. This view creates a love of learning and a resilience that is essential for great accomplishment.
The ultimate take away is that we talk to and teach our children with language that encourages growth rather than a fixed black or white way of thinking. The following diagram helps illustrate this concept:
The presenter at my workshop focused on five key stances that help children move from a fixed mindset to a growth mindset: optimism, perseverance, flexibility, resilience, and empathy. The text, A Mindset for Learning by Kristine Mraz and Christine Hertz explores changing your mindset by “tweaks and not complete turns.” A great way to incorporate these attitudes in our household would be to pair them with children’s books that have those habits as a theme. Classroom Tested Resources offers this great list, but here are a few that I really connected to at my workshop:
Optimism – Almost by Richard Torrey
Persistence – Hana Hashimoto, Sixth Violin by Chieri Vegaki,
Flexibility – Ish by Peter Reynolds
Resilience – Everyone Can Learn to Ride a Bicycle by Chris Raschka
Empathy – Those Shoes by Maribeth Boelts or Big Red Lollipop by Rukhsana Khan
In my house, empathy is a BIG one when the need to be right or for things to be fair gets in the way. This need negatively impacts interactions with family and friends. We are having some very big conversations focusing on this attitude and ways that we can do some perspective taking. I’m looking forward to using some of these books to help teach this habit.
This is wonderful Shannon! I love the concept of “growth mindset”. As an author/illustrator I do many arts-in-ed school visits/assemblies and find that spirit sorely lacking in many children. I spend most of my presentations demonstrating that a finished book is merely the endpoint of a long process filled with attempts, mistakes, corrections. Lots of trial and error. There is no guaranteed successful outcome. There is no marked finish line. The only thing that’s certain is, if you throw up your hands and quit, you won’t succeed. Oh…and thank you for including my book, ALMOST. I wrote that after watching my own children interacting with others. It dawned on me that the spirit of “almost” is what drives kids. They may be light years away from “almost” sinking that basket or riding a two-wheeler, but as long as they think they are almost there…they will keep trying and eventually succeed!