Julianna Lux Blog Post #3 Student Agency

Are you not smart enough to solve it...or have you just not solved it YET? Carol Dwek’s Ted Talk  “The Power of Yet” focuses on encouraging students to believe they can achieve, even if they haven’t yet. Dwek presents the concept of focusing on challenging the students to grow instead of maintaining the same level of intelligence and talent.  I have to question myself: Am I encouraging growth or stagnancy in my classroom? Do I challenge my students to become better, smarter, more talented individuals who can face a challenge? Or do I encourage them to maintain their current abilities?

I teach two very different levels of English--English II Honors (9th grade students who were typically identified as Gifted and Talented at an early age and took English I as 8th grade students) and English I CP. My English II students evidently experienced an encouraged growth mindset from an early age as they have been motivated to strive for the best academically; granted some students in this class do not continue to have this growth mindset and choose to do the minimum to get by. On the other hand, many of my English I students have been discouraged on numerous occasions during their educational journey to me; they accept Cs and Ds because it means they are getting by and not being left behind, with a few motivated to pursue the challenge of earning an A.  Of course, as I typed that last sentence, am I encouraging them to remain stagnant by thinking of how they perform on given tasks using the letters I assign to their final product?

Dwek stated we should praise the process over the product. Encourage students because of their effort, their strategies, their focus, their perseverance. How often do I praise my gifted and talented honors students? Quite likely far more than I praise my CP students. We praise them by placing them in these categories. They grow up knowing they are “gifted” and “talented” and smart; however, some have developed the mindset that they don’t have to keep growing because they already have achieved these labels. By encouraging the process, I would be switching the mindset from producing something they already know how to do to what they can learn how to do during the process of creating something new.

During our Roaring ‘20s PBL, I refused to give my students a list of ideas for their creative product.  Instead, they were tasked with completing a product proposal and meeting with me to gain approval for the assignment. I asked them questions about the final product and what it would like and how it would present the ideas; however, I now realize I should have been asking them about the process of creating the product and what they would need to learn how to do in order to accomplish it. Granted, they did produce some amazing products (a 3D model of a 1920s-style radio, a miniature replica of a baseball stadium, an animated video about Hubble, a Weebly and a Google website), but I’m unsure of how they grew as they created those products. I felt rushed, which is often the case as the end of the semester approaches. I do believe my students grew intellectually (many were able to talk for at least a minute on their researched topic without the use of notes); however, I want my students to grow more than intellectually and continue to challenge themselves.

How often do I praise my English I students? I try to praise them on a daily basis, but so many of these students have given up already. They realize they aren’t reading and writing at the same level as many of their classmates and, as Dweck mentioned, believe they’ve found themselves at a dead end. If I encourage them during the process of a challenging task, for the strategies they choose to accomplish the task, as they are maintaining focus on the task, and for persevering to the end of the task even if unsuccessful on the task, perhaps the next time they face it, they will be more successful. My English I students have six school days until they take the writing portion of the English I EOC. I plan to focus on the process of this challenge the next few days and stress the strategies they can use to be successful instead of focusing on the end game and if they are successful.  

Changing the students’ mindsets to one of growth may not be easy, but it may place all of my students on an even playing field. They can become agents for their own learning and pursue their own interests and grow their own talents if we focus less on the final product and more on how to get there.