A Growth Mindset and You

Everyone Knows This!

Doctor Carol Dweck's theory and study on the topic of growth mindset vs. fixed mindset is very interesting to me. I first became interested in this study when it was introduced to me in the spring of 2016. When hearing of this for the first time my honest opinion was "Well of coarse, how silly of people to think that they can't learn all their lives!". I was the child who was consistently asking for harder work, or different work, if something was too easy for me. I craved new information at a fast pace. However, after learning of this and the more I spoke with people that I knew, the more I realized that people were not the same. They hated challenges because it made them feel lacking. They avoided tasks that would test them and they simply remained in the same routine. So I made it a goal of mine to talk to my nieces and nephews about it to see what they thought.

How Much Room do You Have in There?

I  have always asked the children in my life how school was going, if they needed help with anything, or if there was anything they needed to talk about. But I decided to ask them about this theory. The girls usually said that they had no limit to the amount that they could learn. The boys however told me that they only had so much room and that they thought that after high school they would run out. I told them about the neural pathways and that they were a lot like a video game, and that every time you learn something new, a new part of the game is unlocked. I told them that this game would go on forever. They really liked this explanation and asked me more about how to accomplish this.

Level up!

After the boys learned of the growth mindset they started to give me better reports from their day at school. Rather than them saying that school was boring and that they didn't learn anything, they would tell me all about what the class had done. They were proud to say something was hard and that they were working to master the task. I'm proud to report that they are leveling up everyday. And that I am also continuing to learn new things everyday and master new tasks. We encourage each other and report weekly about all of the things that we are finding hard, as well as the things we no longer find hard.