Influencing Mindsets

I have been doing a lot of talking, reading, and thinking about mindsets this summer. It has certainly become a buzzword in education and elsewhere, with much talk of growth and fixed mindsets since Carol Dweck's book appeared. Even my trainer talks about mindsets in terms of training and I find myself talking to my running partner about mindsets as I remind her that starting a run with a growth mindset that she may have a faster split than last week could help.

During my 'free time' this summer I have been taking an online math course through my district and the first two sections have focused on math mindsets. I know that families, friends and teachers can influence and play a part in math mindsets ("I was never good at math, so little Johnny will surely struggle.") but I had never thought about the ways media influences math mindsets as well. But as soon as someone points it out to you, you see it everywhere--the girl on the sitcom struggling with math while the Asian boy next door is successful with math, parents on my own Facebook feed making comments about not being 'good at math' which means their children aren't either. All too often it seems that girls are the ones suffering from these math mindsets, with fewer females going on to seek higher education or jobs within a mathematical field.

But what about reading mindsets? Writing mindsets? Science and social studies mindsets? I myself suffer from a fixed writing mindset, which is why I am forcing myself to keep up with the blog. The only way I can get better at writing is to force myself to write with regularity. I have found that my own thinking that "I'm not a good writer" gets passed on to my students because by not being a good writer, I KNOW I'm not a good writing teacher. That needs to change, it needs to change now, and I need to be the one to make the change.

I've also been reading A Mindset for Learning by Kristine Mraz and Christine Hertz this summer. Thinking about teaching students the traits needed to have a growth mindset, a learning mindset has influenced my thinking a lot. I've always taught my students about flexibility and I've tried to teach them persistence and empathy, but never thought through how these with relate to their learning. Looking at the upcoming year, thinking about explicitly teaching and modeling the traits of a learning mindset is powerful.

Today I was reading about Storytelling in relation to mindsets. As Mraz and Hertz state an adult can "unwittingly at times, support or erode a child's self-image based on the details and meaning he helps the child draw from every day events." (p80)  Rather than parents telling the story "I was no good at ___, so it's okay if it is hard for you too," stories need to be shared about resiliency, persistence and how they learned from failure. We cannot change the message students are getting at home but we can certainly use storytelling to model a learning mindset at school. We can look for opportunities to lift a student up, telling the story of how they didn't give up when solving a tricky math problem. Storytelling has many possibilities, and I've only just begun to think about it.

I am excited to work with my students and to help them begin their school career not just learning the foundational skills of reading, writing and math, but learning the skills they need to continue learning throughout school, throughout life. Tomorrow I head to Responsive Classroom, and I feel that as we build a community of learners this year we can build each other up to have a learning mindset in first grade.