LearnStorm Growth Mindset Livestream

Ask your kid, "What'd you do today?" or "What'd you do today at school?"

"Nothing."

"How was it?"

"Fine."

You know you always hear that, but if parents can be intentional about how they talk to their kids after school. I always ask my kids, and we have a running thing. So every day after school, I say "best, worst, and weirdest." They have to tell me their best thing, their worst thing, and their weirdest thing, which ends up with a lot of funny stories. But it also gives us an opportunity to kind of dive into, okay, so something didn't go very well. Why not? What was the catalyst for that not going well? Or something went great. What kind of strategies did you use to pull that off? I mean, how did you prepare? How did you study? How did you handle that tricky situation on the playground or whatever?

But talking to your kids instead of just, you know, "Good job, A on the test," ask them, like, "How did you prepare for this? What kind of learning went into this?" And, likewise, if they didn't do so well, like, "Let's talk about what happened."

So really helping parents build that communication with their kids about strategies for learning and what works and what doesn't. Just having them draw the link between effort and achievement is really important. So the kids are hearing it everywhere they go. Very good! Best, worst, weirdest. I love that; that's super cool.

Annie, I'm sorry, Sam, that's right. And I think the bottom line too when it comes to parents is they are sending us the most precious gift they have, and there is nothing worse of a feeling than being a parent and seeing your child struggle in reading or struggling in math. You want so badly to fix it for them, but you don't know how.

And so sometimes when these parents come to us and they're frustrated and they just want it fixed, they're coming from a place of love. We have to train them too, you know, because they'll come upset, "My child is not a good reader," or "My child’s not doing math well now."

And yet, right, right. So what are we going to do? You know, there really is, if you really want to see the kids just go far, a strong partnership between the kiddo, the teacher, and the parent. You know, you've got a big support system there to really hold up.

And then it comes down to what Annie was talking about earlier. All right, we've got our support system holding you; now let's go for some effort. Right, right, exactly.

It sounds like a really strong kind of foundation when you have that. That sounds beautiful.

We have a question from Alyssa B. How would you recommend facilitating and encouraging other faculty to promote growth mindset?

So this is a good question of like what do you do kind of in your actual school environment? I think being transparent and being vulnerable. Teachers work really hard, and we do not have a lot of time in the day.

And it's, you know, sometimes it's really easy to hear something and think, "That's just another thing." So I think by being transparent and allowing people to come into your classroom or see the fruits of your kids' labor, let your kids lead things. You know, let your kids be the ones who go out and talk about things because that's where the power lies, and that's where you show that these mountains are being moved.

And then I think also being vulnerable. Being able to go to a meeting and say, "Guys, I'm really working on growth mindset, but I really feel like I personally am failing here. I need some help." Having those open discussions I think encourage more people. You know, we talk about our students feeling safe, but it's the same thing with the staff. The teachers, we've got to feel safe too to kind of embark on this because it's uncomfortable at the beginning, and it's a new way of thinking and speaking.

And there's a big power shift, right, from the teacher to the kiddos. And that's nerve-wracking at the beginning, right? But it's such a positive power shift, right? It's scary to take at the beginning, right?

Getting administrators in on it too. I really believe that, just like people approach things with a growth and fixed mindset, that a school has if organizations have a growth or fixed mindset. A lot of times, you don't have to look further than like the handbook to figure out like what are we valuing here. Are we valuing growth? Are we valuing perfection?

Right? And so getting a good gauge on what is being valued and how. Are only the kids who are getting on the A honor roll, are they the ones that are being celebrated? Do we have ways of celebrating kids who are making less or making incremental steps toward growth? Like, do we celebrate that at all in our culture?

And so, as a teacher, I think you have the opportunity to speak to your admins and say we need to refocus and celebrate. And like Dave said, this is evidence, this is research-based. There's a strong body of research going back, what, 30 or 40 years that supports this as a valuable learning intervention.

Just sharing that and being, you know, being an advocate for it in your school, I think is key to changing the culture of the entire school. Right? Very good!

Yeah, the only thing I would add is just that, I mean, I think when I've talked to teachers who have kind of catalyzed these kinds of cultural transformations of their schools, I think a lot of the time it's really happened with just a handful of teachers who really started doing it. They really started modeling it and going and talking to other teachers about it. And, you know, it took some time. It wasn't like, "We're all gonna do growth mindset all at once."

I think in my experience, that usually doesn't work very well. It's usually more that you kind of start around this kind of core crystal group of teachers, and then it kind of branches off from there. And as other teachers can see the kind of amazing things that can happen, right? And then they start to say, "Hey, maybe that could work in my class, actually. I'd like to have my kids be that inspired or that motivated."

That's interesting, actually. I'm very curious to know for Sam, what made you want to try out these growth mindset activities? Like, what was the catalyst for that?

It actually stemmed in the beginning. I noticed that my kiddos were coming without tools, and at the time, I was in fifth grade. I had to send my babies off to middle school, and I wanted them as empowered and with as many strategies as they could possibly have before they went because middle school can be really difficult years.

And so I started looking at things like their perseverance. How do they speak to one another? How do they advocate for themselves when they need something? We started little by little looking at things like that, and I started really trying to research and find things to support that.

It's funny; you know, we watch beginning here. I show my kids a video of a really famous quantum theorist who, you know, he's melded science and math, and he's been working on the same equation now for 12 years. I promised my kids, I will never make you work on an equation, but if he can do 12 years, we can do 20 minutes, right?

We started trying to build that stamina, and then it just kind of grew from there. It was kind of the perfect timing. You know, Annie's book came out, Carol Dweck's book was coming out, you know, Pertz is really on the stage now, Learn Storm's out. It feels like a lot of us were seeking this, right? If you look at the manifestation of what has really come to the surface. So I think a lot of teachers at the same time really were feeling the same need.

Great, that's beautiful.

All right, I'm glad we can help fill that need. That makes me feel good.

Leanne Morgan from Ontario asked, "Are there words and phrases that foster growth that I can include in my student conversations?"

I think actually all of you have touched upon this idea of vocabulary, so let's see if we can try to touch on that. I'm a firm advocate of the power of "yet." Anytime they say any kind of negative talk, I'll point to them: "Yet!" You know? And then they have to say it, and then we're big on our "Now what?"

Or "Great! What do you need?" We practice a lot at the beginning of the year, building a toolkit of, "Okay, I'm stuck; now what?" All right, I can ask for more time, I can ask to hear it in a different way, I can ask the teacher to rephrase it.

We talk about what are the different things I can do to advocate for myself because I might not always be within these four walls when I encounter a problem, and I need to have those intrinsic skills. So having that vocabulary ready for your kids, and then on the teacher's part, really trying to back away from "Good job."

That's right! Leave it to the class mathematicians: "What do you think this mathematician does? Propose this idea. Thoughts?" You know? And at the beginning, they just stare at you like, "Is it right or wrong?" You know? But they start to learn, and it's so powerful.

And it is so hard as a teacher, though, when somebody throws something wildly incorrect up there. But the cool thing is there's a lot of grace in that too because when the kids start debating it and discussing it, we talk about do you have the right to change your mind?

The kid will say, "Oh, I'd like to change my answer." I think there's so much power in how kids speak to each other and speak to themselves. And then it's hard for the teacher, but kind of backing up and just giving those launch points, those launching questions, right?

And then you're crowd control at that point, right? Very good!

I think just being mindful of like person praise versus process praise. So if we say to a kid who does really well, like, "Oh, you're so smart," they equate doing well with being smart, that it's some inherent inborn thing that they have that they can do well.

And then when inevitably they hit a setback, which they will, and they don't do so well, then all of a sudden it's like a question of like, "Well, if I'm not smart, then who am I?"

So just being mindful of praising effort and the process that they took to learn, like, "That was a really great strategy you used," or, "I like how you solved that problem." Or if they breeze through something, maybe that wasn't challenging enough. Let's try to find something else so being mindful of that.

Being more robust with your feedback, I think we like to use stickers and say "Good job!" a lot, and in the book I wrote, we call it, well, I read it somewhere else, but they call it "Paula praise." So like on American Idol, if you think back to American Idol like the first with Simon and Paula and Randy.

Paula would always say "Good job," and Simon was a lot meaner, but he was much more specific. And so you don't want to be like that, but definitely be specific in the feedback that you're giving.

And I would rather have less feedback that's more specific than generalized praise that is really meaningless. So you want to be mindful of that. And then, yeah, just think about that. I used to say, "Come on, you can do this; it's so easy!" And that was something I said as a teacher, and I look back and think, "Oh my gosh, you know what? That wasn't easy for that person. It was easy for me or I thought it was easy, but it wasn't easy for that person."

And so what I was saying was actually not helping; it was counterproductive, and I thought I was being helpful.

So just like really being mindful of what you're saying and how that affects the student that you're working with is really important.

Yeah, I really love all those points.

Yeah, I guess just from a growth mindset standpoint, I think the kinds of language we use can be really important. There are so, for example, are you, are you referring to things as, for example, we can talk about building skills, like really calling out when you're doing something, like, "Why are you doing it?" "Oh, you're building your skills! You're becoming a mathematician!"

Or "You're building your writing skills right now!" Or "You're becoming a better writer!"

We're really focusing students on those processes and kind of how the fact that they're learning while doing so. It's kind of taking, again, you know, taking the focus off of the end result and really focusing on the thing that the students can actually control for themselves, which is the process that they're doing.

Really reminding them and kind of debriefing with them so that they really understand what it is that they're doing.

And that all this effort they're doing, it's not just going into a grade; it's going to them leveling up, them becoming a writer, them becoming a mathematician or a scientist or whatever that may be—a great civic thinker, right? Whatever that may be, they're really developing those skills, and really making sure to call out that learning is a process that they're enacting in your class, right?

So not just like work for the sake of work, but work for the sake of growth and betterment.

I love that!

All right, so we're going to wrap up. I'm going to actually throw you a bit of a curveball and ask you a final question but with a challenge.

So what is one last piece of advice for teachers for fostering growth mindset that you would give this year, if you can give it in 10 words or less?

Oh, I know! All right, I'm going to start with Dave.

"Have a growth mindset about building a growth mindset culture."

Was that 2? I think I did that right!

Okay, all right, go ahead, Annie. One last piece of advice for teachers.

I would say, "Model your growth and fixed mindsets and normalize mistakes in your classroom."

Well done! Well done! I like it.

All right, Sam, your last turn.

Um, okay! "Be vulnerable, be a champion for your kids, and model."

I love that! That was very good and all very tweetable—very great!

So I want to thank Dave and Annie and Sam for joining us today. I learned something, and I hope that you all did too.

I want to remind everyone that there's still some time to sign up, so if you haven't signed up, please sign up, like, right now. Today, but definitely by the end of October.

And if you keep on tagging your classroom celebrations with the hashtag #LearnStorm on Twitter and Facebook, we really love seeing it in the office, so please keep on doing that.

Welcome back to the school year, teachers. Thank you, and goodbye!