4. Take action. Once students hear which mindset occupies the voice in their head, can recognize it is a choice, and learn to talk to themselves from the stance of a growth mindset, they are able to use the research in real life. Students will pursue academic challenges as opportunities to learn instead of avoiding them as potential opportunities for failure.
Teaching the students in your room to develop a growth mindset is not nearly as intimidating as it might sound. I go over the idea of a growth mindset with my students and the steps to developing positive self-talk, and then I use the time-honored technique of teachable moments.
When my students say, “I can’t do this” I am not annoyed. I revel in the opportunity to challenge their self-doubt. In class one day, I showed students an example of a six-paragraph essay they would be writing. Six paragraphs to third graders, many of whom would be writing in their second language, might as well have been a Greek epic. I saw the self-doubt in their faces as their eyes widened and lower lips dropped.
“What are you thinking?” I asked.
“That’s so long.” a student commented.
“I won’t be able to do it,” admitted another. I encouraged my students. I actually had the whole class say, “This is going to be hard. I will at some point get frustrated and I might even get bored, but I will write this essay.”
This was a brief interaction with my class. However, repeatedly modeling this ideology, coupled with strong instructional methods, helps students develop a growth mindset. My students see they are able to accomplish difficult tasks. After several days of strategic instruction, every one of my students did write their first essay, and they also developed a sense of self-efficacy. “Notice,” I said, “that sometimes when you think you can’t do something, you really can.”
Are We Modeling Optimism or Pessimism?
The way our students interpret and respond to setbacks and challenges is a major component of self-efficacy. Part of living from a growth mindset is the belief improvement is possible with sustained effort. The other part is explicitly teaching students they have the ability to accomplish goals. To do this, we must nurture the endless power of optimism.
Optimism is not just seeing the glass as half full. In a psychological context, optimism and pessimism are seen as reflections of how people explain life’s events to themselves. Optimistic people believe difficulties in life can be overcome, while a pessimistic person interprets challenges as permanent.
A person’s tendency to be more pessimistic or optimistic has been shown to greatly affect their life. In his 1995 book, The Optimistic Child, Martin Seligman summarizes his research and points out the dangers of pessimism saying, “Pessimism is an entrenched habit of mind that has sweeping and disastrous consequences: depressed mood, resignation, underachievement, and even unexpectedly poor physical health. It hardens with each setback and becomes self-fulfilling.”
Whether a person is optimistic or pessimistic can often be picked up on by others, especially children. Theories in cognitive psychology suggest “that one way people learn is via social learning. That is, people emulate and duplicate behaviors that they observe in their environment.” As teachers we know our students are not only studying the curriculum, but they are studying us as well. That means we need to be models of optimism.
Our daily thoughts and actions need to demonstrate to students that thinking positively about the world, seeing our setbacks as temporary and changeable, helps us achieve our goals and become more productive and more effective people.
Building Gritty Students
Complementing Dweck’s and Seligman’s transformative research on optimism is Angela Duckworth from the University of Pennsylvania. Duckworth claims there is a quality beyond intelligence or socioeconomic status that contributes to students’ success. Her research states that some students possess a quality that allows them to overcome adversity and stick with difficult pursuits for prolonged periods of time.
In My Classroom
Amy Lyon, Fifth-Grade Teacher
I was eager to further explore character education in my classroom. When I started learning more about grit and the tremendous role it plays in our lives, I knew not only was this skill essential, but it was also something I could teach in the classroom. For my students in rural New Hampshire, I developed a yearlong curriculum, one lesson every month, to understand and develop grit.
My students began the study of grit with a discussion of the concepts of optimism and pessimism. For my students, I explain that optimism is about facing adversity realistically and then taking action to deal with it. We dive into the idea that the more optimistic someone is, the more likely that person is to be able to do “deep practice” to get better at something of his or her choosing, which leads to perseverance. That, to me, is the foundation of grit.
The first thing I notice in my classroom is the change in language. Kids start talking about a task as a “challenge” instead of simply “hard.” I actually hear our students explaining to their friends what their long-term goals are and the steps they will need to take be successful. It is evident that students are more aware of how to manage schoolwork when it gets hard. I see students working harder to solve more rigorous problems because they see struggle as proof that they are challenging themselves.
As a capstone project, our students create a Perseverance Walk. I ask students to think about an adult they would like to interview about how that person accomplished a long-term goal. Together we generate potential interview questions around three major topics: the goal set by the interviewee, the obstacles overcome in the process, and finally what the interviewee’s life is like after obtaining his or her goal.
With this information, students can create any number of products to show their learning, such as a poster, slide presentation, essay, or even produce their own video. However they choose to present their Perseverance Walk, the sense of pride students have as they show off a goal that someone dear to them has accomplished is palpable. This lesson serves as tangible proof for students that lots of ordinary people have goals and with that come hardships. The real difference is in how you choose to manage those hardships. Will you give in or will you show grit and persevere?
She calls this quality “grit” and has defined grit as the “disposition to pursue very long-term goals with passion and perseverance.” Her research has found that students with more grit attain higher levels of education, earn higher GPAs, and are more likely to graduate from high school. With outcomes like that, actively teaching grit should be a part of every classroom.
Lyon’s Perseverance Walk is one specific lesson teachers can implement in their classrooms. It shows that integrating grit does not have to be separate from our academic curriculum, but rather that teaching self-efficacy skills, like grit, can be academically rigorous and complement our curriculum, as well as become incredibly meaningful to students. As teachers we can deliberately look for teachable moments to identify grit to our students and value it as an academic skill.
Teacher Tools
1. High Five Goodbye
The end of the school day is typically pretty hectic around Room 207. There is homework to be distributed, tables to wipe down, and inevitably something that slipped my mind until one minute before school gets out. I am working toward making the end of the day a calm and tranquil time, but I have found one thing that helps students, so I leave on the right foot even if it is a little chaotic.
On the way out the school door, I stand at the bottom of the stairs and give each of my students a high five. As our hands meet, each student repeats back a positive affirmation, like “I am a world changer!” or “I can be kind to others.” No matter how the day went, no matter how challenging it was, my students and I end with saying something positive. This helps model optimism for them.
Even though this takes just a few seconds, I have found that this little goodbye, simply a short phrase or sentence, helps to validate the work the students have done and leaves eve
ryone, including myself, feeling just a little better. On a practical level, it has the added benefit of pacing out eager-to-leave students so they do not trample each other in the hallway.
Sometimes I come up with the High Five Goodbye phrase. I like to tie it to what we have learned that day, like “I can fight for justice like Dolores!” after learning about civil rights activist Dolores Huerta, or “I’m as strong as the Rocky Mountains” when we study geography. Other times I will call back to something our students struggled with that day, like “I can control my body” or “Kind words matter.” Most often, I have students come up with the phrase themselves. They have said things like “I am a respectful kid” or “I’ve got power in me.”
Whatever the phrase of the day, it is important to emphasize that effort, hard work, and character matter in our classrooms. The High Five Goodbye is just one simple way of doing that.
2. Coach and Response
Teachers have been using the call-and-response technique in their classroom since . . . well, since forever. Usually I have seen this used as a way to get attention. When I was a student, my teachers used the tried-and-true “One, two, three . . . eyes on me,” with students responding “One, two . . . eyes on you” to quickly get the attention of the class so they could give directions.
I get my students’ attention in much the same way, and it works. In addition I also use what I call a Coach and Response. Its purpose is not to grab attention, but to encourage students, while they are actually doing their work, to use their very best effort and push themselves even when the work is challenging. Students don’t stop work and look at me; they yell out their response, which lights a little fire in their bellies, so it’s easier to keep going. They are encouraged to persevere and develop grit.
For example, when students are writing a paragraph independently, everyone starts off on task and are all working, but then the little murmurs begin. The writing is getting a little harder and students are tempted to play with their erasers or talk about the football game at recess. That’s when I use a Coach and Response. I will shout out, “Can’t stop!” They will yell back—and I require it to be loud—“Won’t stop!” I follow up with “All day!” and they respond, “Every day!”
This simple two-second exchange acts as a reset button. Students get a small reprieve from being silent and it reminds the class they are expected to work hard. I see their little nostrils flare, their eyebrows lower in concentration, their faces move just a little closer to the paper or computer they are using.
The Coach and Response can literally be anything, but it should matter to the class. This year, we stole Denver Broncos’ quarterback Peyton Manning’s play call. I said, “Hurry, hurry!” Then students yelled, “Omaha!” What that actually means is a total mystery, but to our football-obsessed students, it is motivating. I have heard teachers use lyrics from songs and funny quotes from students. Three years ago, one of my students came up with his own and said, “What are we? . . . A community!” My current students still use that Coach and Response in our class!
Angela Watson, National Board-certified teacher and host of the Truth for Teachers podcast says, “When I lived in DC, I taught many children from Nigeria and Ghana, where call-and-response techniques are deeply rooted in the culture and extend beyond the classroom walls. “Ago . . . Amée!” (pronounced AH-go, AHM-ay) is a great example to use in the classroom. Hold the notes a little bit (Ahh-gooooooo . . . Am-éeeeeeee!).” This is a wonderful way to build community and value the cultures our students bring to school. Get creative and come up with your own Coach and Response!
3. College Fridays
While there are certainly other pathways to academic success, attending college can be seen as the epitome of a learning career. Whether a student would become the first in their family to study at university, or a college education seems like a forgone conclusion, attending and graduating from college is a shining example of a long-term goal that requires grit.
One October, buried deep in a email, I saw that Denver Public Schools was celebrating College and Career Readiness Month, and I decided our students needed to celebrate it in our classroom as well. I began by asking a simple question to my students: “What is college?” Kara’s hand shot up to save the day. Kara was a wonderfully ambitious student reading a year above grade level in her second language. She excitedly answered, “I know! College is the same thing as sixth grade!”
Some of my students know about colleges and universities. Some have parents or older siblings who have graduated from college. And some have families who talk about college as an expectation. But for many of my students, college is an unknown concept. If our students are going to attend college, they need to learn about it at an early age. In this spirit, my class began the tradition of College Fridays.
Starting College Fridays was surprisingly easy. I enlisted my colleagues to wear college T-shirts on Fridays. One year, teachers even made their own college pennants out of construction paper and hung them in the hallway with pictures of their college days lovingly glued to the edges. I have sent students running around the halls with clipboards, interviewing every teacher and adult they see, asking, “Where did you go to college?” and “What college would you want to go to?”
The most important part of a College Friday in my classroom might also be the simplest. As we end our week of learning on Friday afternoons, we take the last few minutes of school and look up a college video online. We watch admission commercials for colleges my students have heard of, maybe colleges family members have gone to. We even look up college sports and study-abroad opportunities. One Friday, Ariela presented me with a crumpled-up piece of paper that had been in her pocket all day. She said, “I asked a lady at church to write down the name of this college so we could look it up.” Then Matthew said, “My brother is in the JROTC,” the high school–level armed services training program. “Can we look that up too?” Soon College Friday grew into High School Thursday and Middle School Wednesday. We even started looking up careers and jobs students were interested in. Soon, our students’ curiosity had created an uncomplicated career education program.
All of this turned into a meaningful and much-anticipated time for our students. They started talking about colleges like they were their favorite colors or sports teams, saying things like “I call dibs on the University of Chicago” and “Janet and I are going to be Ducks at the University of Oregon together.”
There is power in ending each day and each week with a deliberate conversation about students’ futures. It helps connect their learning to their future goals. Our class knows we are not learning fractions because they’re on the test. We are learning fractions because they help us understand the world, and we need to understand the world if we are going to do great things. More importantly, a genuine discussion of future possibilities tells students they have the ability to accomplish their goals.
4. You Can Get Away with It
I tell students they can get away with anything in my class. Yes! I tell them that, but I do so to emphasize that learning is a choice. I start by pointing out that they already made the choice to come to school. I say, “You chose to come to school to get your education. You chose to come to school today because you know that learning gives you power. Our class needs you here. Thank you for making this choice.”
Even in elementary school, but especially as they get older, students really can choose to show up for school or not. We can punish students or incentivize them to learn, but at the end of the day it comes down to each student’s personal choice to pursue learning. Acknowledging that choice gives students power. It clearly places accountability in a student’s hands and goes beyond just physically being present in the classroom. Making the choice to learn takes grit, and we should call that out for students.
A major part of my reading instruction is sustained reading. This means students are reading books for enjoyment and practicing literacy skills we have discussed, for forty-five minutes to
an hour, each and every day. In my classroom, each and every child practices what our class calls “power reading.” Some students lie on desks, sit in comfy beanbags, or sit back-to-back with a friend. One particular student liked to read hanging upside down draped over a chair. Regardless of how they sit, I expect each and every one of my students to be reading. The challenging thing for me as a teacher is that reading is a 100 percent a choice for my students. I can enforce that they hold a book and sit quietly, but I can’t jump inside their brains and make them sound out words. I address this choice in deliberate ways.
As a class we make charts that compare and contrast “power reading” and “fake reading.” Students act these out and see if their partners can tell the difference. I tell my students the story of Joe, a former student, who was a very skilled reader. He came into third grade able to read the more challenging texts better than any other student in class, but as the year went on he struggled to make the choice to read. Instead of pushing himself, he chose the easiest books he could find. Often he was just holding a book, looking at it but not making the choice to read. Joe did well in third grade. He passed every assessment, but he could have done so much better if he had consistently made the decision to do the hard work of reading.
In reflecting on this, I think about moves I could have made to engage and encourage Joe to make the choice to read, and being honest with students about the choices they have is one change I have made in my instruction. Now I tell my students, “You can be just like Joe. You can go through third grade and get away with not actually reading. I might not catch you right away, but know that you are making a choice.” As a class, we talk about their personal reasons to make the decision to learn. My students this year even wrote an essay explaining why they wanted to become power readers.
I Wish My Teacher Knew Page 15