Ashley Blackwelder Blog Post #3: Student Agency

I wasn't expecting to really be blown away by the TED Talk, as I assumed I had the gist of the "growth mindset" idea that we hear so much about these days. I 100% agree that it's a vital mindset to foster in our students--I just didn't expect to really get anything new out of it. Instead, I paused the video halfway through to interrupt my husband who was watching TV, to tell him A GROWTH MINDSET CAN CHANGE THE WAY YOUR BRAIN WORKS! What more evidence do we need that our students need to be encouraged and celebrated when they take risks (and experience setbacks), that the practice of judging based on "success" or "failure" is completely damaging to our students?
I am lucky, because my whole job is really to encourage this mindset in our students. It's a challenge--and it's a slow process when all they've ever known is a fixed mindset. But I'm encouraged by the small steps that I can see in our school, and maybe even more so by the changes that I can see in the mindsets of many of our teachers. Trying to push for PBL, STEM/STEAM, Genius Hour, or student-led ANYthing can be incredibly difficult when the teacher is the one with the fixed mindset, and likely the one who is working with his/her own fears of failure. I've had the opportunity to bring them to my lab (or visit their classrooms), help the kids work on something that's typically messy, noisy, and completely out of their comfort zones, and then point out the ways that their kids succeeded when it appeared to be a giant mess. Bringing attention to the process over the product is huge--and something that many of us still struggle with. But it is starting to happen, slowly but surely. I've seen many students who never excelled at anything--even good behavior--start to stand out in a STEM classroom, because of their willingness to think creatively and RISK failure. Kids who have never experienced failure, on the other hand, struggle at times, because they aren't comfortable with any scenario that has an option other than "right" or "wrong."
Now that we're a few years into our STEM journey, growth mindset is coming, and we definitely have some bright spots already. We still have a long way to go, though, and our grading/testing system doesn't help the situation. I get the pressure that classroom teachers face when it's time to turn in grades and the kids haven't "finished" enough to assess. I also get the pressure of having your "success" determined by the scores your students receive on one test at the end of the year. No matter how supportive your administration is, it's hard to not feel like a failure when things don't go as well as you hoped. It's an exciting but also incredibly difficult time to be an educator. There are SO many great ideas and opportunities for our students right now, but we're limited by a system that doesn't actually put our students' needs first.
So we all just keep doing what we can to encourage the students in our care every day. We allow students to share/present projects that are still in progress, so that they can get feedback from their peers. We celebrate a creative approach to solving a problem, even if the first (or second, or third) attempt isn't quite what we were looking for. We see students' setbacks and frustrations as learning opportunities, and help them to build perseverance and encourage each other. We let them see US make and recover from our own mistakes. Growth mindset is a huge shift for a lot of students and teachers, but there are little things we can do every day to help encourage it.