The Teacher As Connector: Growth Mindset
STOP! Do not read this post before watching the 5 minute video above. Trust me! :-)
Disclaimer: I am not an expert in brain research or growth mindset. I highly recommend reading Mindset by Carol Dweck and Mathematical Mindsets by Jo Boaler (speaker in the video below). I also recommend the videos by Stephanie Faye Frank on YouTube (see the video above and the link in resources). She gives a really important perspective on living with a growth mindset and modeling it for students. In this post, I want to talk about how I changed my mathematical teaching practice with the goal of fostering growth mindset in my students. I also want to highlight promoting growth mindset thinking in conjunction with mindfulness practices which I wrote about a couple of weeks ago. As the video explains above, make sure you are internalizing growth mindset and what it means in regards to brain plasticity.
Can I Do This?
When I started listening to podcasts about a year ago, I enjoyed them and got hooked on some educational ones, as well as ones in the area of movies, entertainment, and pop culture. Last summer I started to think that maybe I wanted to create a podcast of my own about teaching. I knew nothing about equipment, media hosts, or any other details, but I knew I could learn with time. I remembered a 21st century skills course I took through my district where we blogged and dabbled in podcasting with Audacity. I had a little experience editing video for a drama club movie years ago. I figured that my theater background would come in handy in my speaking style and overall format of my show. I had enough experiences, along with being very familiar with how podcasts go, to feel this challenge was surmountable.
I jumped on YouTube and after seeing all the videos about how to podcast, I knew I could do it. I was still nervous and had plenty of learning and work ahead of me. Sometimes I questioned whether I had anything to say and fell into the impostor syndrome game. More often, I wanted to throw my laptop out the window because I still don’t always get audio and image files into the right folders! The whole undertaking was a huge learning curve. My husband was the one who tackled getting a website set up for me and I will forever be grateful for that.
I just wonder whether I would have had the same confidence and willingness to take risks if I didn’t have the level of interest and passion for the topic or the prerequisite skills. If I hadn’t had 29 years of teaching under my belt, never edited anything, and never spoke on stage, would I have been willing to take this on and put myself out there? I see people on Facebook podcasting groups doing this constantly with no prior experience in any of it, but a strong passion for their chosen topic. It is inspiring to see.
My point is, and this idea may be obvious, I find that I have a growth mindset for something new or overwhelming when I am interested in it or feel even the slightest bit of confidence in that subject/topic. Motivation is a big factor in whether I have a growth mindset or not. It is hard for me to have a growth mindset for subjects/topics that don’t interest me or have always been hard for me. For example, I am not about to take up baking as a hobby because I don’t care for it and get very anxious watching people on TV try to bake something that could fall apart at any moment. Not my jam, pun intended.
Moving From a Fixed Mindset to a Growth Mindset
For many years, drawing and math were something I viewed as impossible for my brain to grasp. Thanks to a theater professor at Salem State, I got over the idea that I couldn’t draw. I am interviewing that professor on my podcast, so I will save that story for now, except to say that he changed my mindset about drawing in about ten minutes. We, as educators, should understand the influence we potentially have on students’ mindsets. As far as my mindset about math, I am happy to say that changed as well.
As an adult, I see now that my schooling failed me. My teachers didn’t have a growth mindset and weren’t flexible to meet my learning needs. I never knew that math was creative and that you could have many different ways to solve a problem. My mind embraces the creative elements of math much better now that I have taught the subject in more pedagogically sound ways. I still have to work really hard at it, but I am more confident and flexible with math now due to the practice I have had in preparing for teaching my students.
I understand now that I would have been more successful learning math if my teachers had put more of an emphasis on number sense work in those early elementary years. For example, subitizing, one more/one less (ten more/ten less, hundred more/hundred less, etc.), benchmarks of 5 and 10 (1/2 and 1, 50 and 100, etc.), part, part, whole,and other number sense work would have built so much understanding and confidence in me as a math learner. Estimation is another powerful math understanding that was not supported enough in my math education.
I was never taught why, but instead told to use this equation. It meant nothing to me and I couldn’t memorize numbers well, so I couldn’t remember the equations. I never got to sit with other students to talk out problems and get my ideas affirmed or get feedback to learn a better way. I put in extra effort, went after school to work with teachers, was tutored, etc. and still barely passed. Why wouldn’t I think math is impossible for me?
“In my opinion, good lessons must have this time for students to develop ideas while attempting to solve a problem – the during phase. However, if this is not followed by a rich discussion this approach will almost certainly fail. Too many teachers fail to reserve time for discussion. There is also a skill in developing a classroom atmosphere where students talk to each other, evaluate other responses, and truly discuss ideas. The development of a mathematical community of learners is the key to allowing students to struggle with mathematical ideas. ”
I want to avoid my students having the same unnecessary alienation to math that I experienced. It is important to teach and support students’ number sense even in the upper elementary grades and find what strategies students innately use. John A. Van De Walle’s work tells us that all students have innate strategies. We can see how they approach the math and then help them get more efficient with the strategies that they already have.
I am teaching fourth grade this year and students are expected to complete problems in all operations many different ways including the standard algorithm by the end of the year. I will teach my students why the algorithms work the way they do so that if they struggle with or forget the steps of the algorithm, they have other strategies they can use. I will pose math problems that have more than one answer and students will engage in rich mathematical conversations with their classmates. They will be affirmed and get feedback.
Once I changed my philosophy and methods for teaching math, students told me, “I like math this year!” and, “I can’t believe I’m good at math.” Jo Boaler’s book, as well as all the work of Christine Tondevold and her Build Math Mind website were vital in helping me improve my math teaching. I never would have believed this five years ago, but Math is one of my favorite subjects to teach now.
Watch the video below, entitled My Favorite No, and think how powerful this would have been for you when you were growing up in math classes throughout elementary, middle and high school whether you were a confident, successful math student or not.
Mathematical Mindsets
The book Mathematical Mindsets,by Jo Boaler, is essential in my growth as a math teacher who strives to promote a growth mindset for all students. I recommend reading every word of this book and implementing its teachings. Here are the chapters of her book:
Chapter 1: The Brain and Mathematical Learning
Chapter 2: The Power of Mistakes and Struggle
Chapter 3: The Creativity and Beauty in Mathematics
Chapter 4: Creating Mathematical Mindsets: The Importance of Flexibility with Numbers
Chapter 5: Rich Mathematical Tasks
Chapter 6: Mathematics and the Path to Equity
Chapter 7: From Tracking to Growth Mindset Grouping
Chapter 8: Assessment for a Growth Mindset
Chapter 9: Teaching Mathematics for a Growth Mindset
“The most productive classrooms are those in which students work on complex problems, are encouraged to take risks, and can struggle and fail and still feel good about working on hard problems. This means that mathematical tasks should be difficult for students in order to give students opportunities for brain growth and making connections, but it doesn’t mean just increasing the difficulty, which would leave students frustrated. Rather, it means changing the nature of tasks in math classrooms - giving more low floor/high ceiling tasks.”
Growth mindset is not just for students who are struggling. Part of this work with growth mindset is to help students who find the work easy right now. Many of these students are in a fixed mindset because they have never had to struggle. It is important to focus on their efforts and that they are “on track” instead of focusing on the idea that they are innately “good at math,” or reading or whatever the subject may be. Eventually, math will get harder for most of these students and if they have a fixed mindset about their innate ability, this sudden struggle could cause them to question everything they thought they knew about themselves as learners and suck all their confidence away, leaving them feeling lost. Provide enriching content and investigations for all students and model how to handle the struggle while you have them. Help them learn to enjoy a challenge.
Drawing and Math were my areas of fixed mindset, but any area in which you feel you were not dealt the “talent” or “ability” hand has the potential to be an area in which you can change your thinking and grow and improve with the right guidance and practice. This mind shift is a choice and we need to offer that choice to our students whatever their struggles may be.
Videos are a fun way to introduce growth mindset, but make sure you are in a place to model it and truly have that mindset yourself when working with your students. There are many videos on this topic for students of all ages and I share a few below. The Sesame Street, Janelle Monae- Power of Yet song is especially fun!
Younger grades:
Older grades:
Mindfulness Can Support Moving Toward a Growth Mindset
How can students have a growth mindset if they are not present and aware of their fixed mindset thoughts?
How can students be more present to notice how mistakes make them feel and how can they revise those feelings to promote a growth mindset?
What meditations and mindfulness practices can help my students anytime, but especially when they are in the moment of struggle to build growth mindset?
Can meditations and mantras work proactively before starting a potentially challenging lesson or activity?
There were not many resources linking mindset work with mindfulness and I hope more resources will be available soon for classroom teachers that link the two practices. There is a video for adults that could be revised to create a simplified script for use with students. It includes a kid friendly metaphor of comparing our minds to a garden with flowers and weeds. If you do create the script, please share it with me so I can pass it on in this blog and use it with my students.
It is always a great choice to remind students to breathe. They can do this anywhere and at any time they feel they need it. There are many different visuals you can provide students for this meditation or you can have them practice visualizing so that they can do this anywhere without a physical visual. I have seen some teachers laminate these for each student to use as needed throughout the day. The link to these are in the resources and they include triangle breathing, square breathing, star breathing and lazy 8 breathing. There are videos available on Youtube that demonstrate the breathing techniques. This breathing allows students to become more present and aware of their thoughts. Then students can repeat growth mindset meditations/mantras that either teachers have taught them or that they have created on their own based on what they feel they need to hear when they start to struggle.
Here is another amazing video by Stephanie Faye Frank. It demonstrates the power of positive self talk:
Summing it Up: Ways Teachers can be Connectors for their students regarding Growth Mindset
Teachers can help students see the connection between mistakes and powerful learning in the brain.
Teachers can connect students to powerful learning experiences that don’t have one right answer. Experiences in which they can investigate, collaborate, and make mistakes.
Teachers can connect the practice of mindfulness to their efforts in helping students build a growth mindset. Students being present and noticing their discomfort with struggle, breathing, and working on their self talk is a powerful connection.
Resources