Go Slow to Go Fast- the importance of the first days of school

Go Slow to Go Fast. 

I capitalize this phrase because it has become a kind of mantra for me whenever I am embarking on a new and important endeavor.  If you skip building the foundation, your house will crumble.  Crumbling houses/classrooms are not fun.  Ask me, I have been there.

Go Slow to Go Fast.  There are tons of parables, fables and stories that illustrate this point.  Tortoise and the Hare and Three Little Pigs are two examples.  Yet, when receiving our new students to our schools and classrooms in the first days of school, we are tempted to forget the pigs eaten and the loser rabbit.  

Here is my Go Slow advice to you:

Take it slow and teach the routines, procedures, rules and values that your students need to be successful both in and out of your classroom.  Model them, practice them, read about them, challenge them and celebrate them.  I give you permission to take it slow, break it down and give your students the tools to be successful this year.  

Take it slow for your own well being.  Breathe deep, be present in the moment, cherish the small things and be grateful.  Relax and smile.  Enjoy the struggle and learn.  The most important thing in the classroom is your relationship with your students. They don't care about prefect bulletin boards or the cutest name tags (though those things are very cool too).  They care about being in community with you and their classmates.  They want to belong. 

Lastly, take it slow to HAVE FUN with your students.  Everything you do should lead them believe that school is the most awesome place in the world and that you are their biggest fan.  Be that awesome teacher that you want to be and they will LOVE you for it.  

Sing from your heart and let everyone hear it,

Dance like everyone is watching and smile,

Love like you want your students to love,

Live like this is the best day ever. 

Happy new school year! 

Scott

Grit and the Growth Mindset: Classroom Game Plan

In the past year I have come to be more and more convinced that the most important thing I can do for my students is help them develop grit.  Last March, I posted about what grit is and my thoughts on how it could be taught in the classroom.  Unfortunately, as I dabbled last spring in trying to foster a gritter classroom, I didn't see the results I had hoped for with my students.


This led me to my last post, Growth Mindset in the Classroom, What NOT to do.   I outlined some practices I am going to do my best to eliminate from my classroom.  I found that even if you teach students about and model a growth mindset, it isn't enough to overcome their own basises they have already developed at age 7.  Furthermore, I have come to believe that the way I was measuring student achievement, celebrating student learning, and responding to student mistakes may have contributed to students developing a fixed mindset.

This post is going to be a Game Plan for developing a gritty classroom which pushes all students to adopt a growth mindset.  I am going to write down my intentions as a starting place to develop my own teaching practice, and hopefully create a more effective classroom for my students.  It is my aspiration that I can help them develop a mindset that will last a lifetime.

Caveat: I am not saying I have all the answers.  In fact, if you, dear reader, have any ideas to add, please share them in the comments section.  With your help, I can make this plan even better.  I look forward to your juicy strategies and techniques.

The Growth Mindset Game Plan - Part I

1.  Celebrate Mistakes.  From the first day of school I will teach students that mistakes are how you learn.  I will model this by making my mistakes transparent and explaining what I am learning from them.  I will also create some simple posters celebrating mistakes to keep this idea present at all times and make it clear to anyone who is in the room teaching what this class believes.  Lastly, I will share stories of people, such as Helen Keller and Albert Einstein, that used their mistakes to learn to do great things.  And perhaps most importantly, I will try to always frame student mistakes as a positive experience.

2.  Growth Oath.  I will develop a growth mindset oath that my students and I can read at the beginning of class each day.  I am a big believer in "fake it until you make it".  Developing a growth mindset will be difficult for some students.  Stating our aspirations over and over will help them
make the mental leap when they are ready.

3.  Track Growth.  Last year we had a classroom tracker on the wall for reading levels.  It was based on trying to achieve a benchmark goal.  As students moved to a new level, they moved their name card to the next numbered level.  What this tracker didn't do was measure growth.  Some students were already meeting their benchmark goal in September but only grew one level all year.  Other students started as pre-readers and grew 5 levels.  I want a tracker that celebrates how much a student grows.  I plan on expanding this idea to other trackers such as math and MAP testing.  It will have all students beginning at zero and move up as they make growth.  Ultimately I want students to internalize that the way we measure success is by progress, not product.

4. Lessons on Grit.   One of my school's values is tenacity.  I will make grit an extension of what it means to have tenacity.  I will make grit explicit by teaching lessons about why it is important and how it is developed.  I will give lessons on how each person can actually grow their brain by making mistakes and learning from them.  Mindset Works has a program I plan to use as a model.

5. Teach Parents about Growth Mindset.  I am not sure how to do this yet to be perfectly honest.  I do know that it essential that I get parents on board to support this initiative.  This will include a letter home, part of our first Saturday school, and part of our conferences.  At minimum I want parents communicating to their child the key messages:  I believe in you.  You can do this.  I will not give up on you.  Mistakes are how you learn.

Pause for the Cause: Bruce Lee

Today's pause is focused on the words of Bruce Lee.  I had always thought of Bruce Lee as a Martial Artists guru and movie actor.   Lee was also a teacher of the Martial Arts.  Teaching and learning transcend all field s of knowledge; the essence of what we do as teachers is common, no matter the content.   What makes Lee resonate so strongly with me is that he had a unique style of Martial Arts he developed himself- The Way of No Way.  Meaning he believed one must break from the rigid forms and styles of traditional martial arts and combine what works best for your own practice. 

As a teacher I couldn't agree more.  Teachers must find The Way of No Way for their own teaching style: find what works best for you and your students, be prepared to fail and try again, and keep positive outlook despite countless challenges. Go ahead, jump in the water today.

Growth Mindset in the Classroom: What NOT to do

A while back I wrote about grit and it's importance in the classroom.  I even included some simple tips that you can use to foster grit in the classroom.  Looking back to last year, I used those tips in my own classroom but still felt I fell short in inspiring my first graders to have a true growth mindset.  Maybe it was just too little to late.  Perhaps I didn't do enough to tip the balance.  It is possible I even had routines and language which ran counter to my own goals.  The beauty of teaching is that you get a "do over" every year.

Looking forward to a new school year, I decided I needed a game plan to follow to create the type of classroom culture that would nourish the grown mind set and set the stage for building grit in my students.  Before a student even steps through my door this August, I will have my Growth Mindest Game Plan ready to go.  That will be the topic of my next post.  First, I have to decide what I need to eliminate from my teaching practice and classroom that prevent the growth mindset from flourishing.

Like most people, I like to believe that I have a growth mindset and teach my students to believe in themselves.  However, the more I have read on the topic, the more I have come to realize that I have inadvertently been sabotaging my student's ability to maintain a growth mindset. I recently read this well written and cited post by Steve Gardiner, Stop the Pay, Stop the Play, which helped me define 4 things I was doing wrong in my classroom.  I need to clean the slate before I can begin my Game Plan.

So here is my list of what NOT to do this year:

1) Do not tell students they are smart when they solve a problem.  

This is easier said than done.  It even seems like a good idea.  Kids like to hear they are smart.  But telling kids they are smart actually reduces their motivation to seek challenging activities.  In a study by Carol Dweck of Stanford University, students who were praised for being smart on an IQ test, tended to choose less challenging later in the experiment.  Students who were praised for their hard work chose more challenging tasks.

2) Do not use rewards to encourage good work.

I am not typically in favor of rewards and incentives for kids when it comes to education.  There is plenty of evidence that rewards lead to lower intrinsic motivation.  Read Punished by Rewards by Alfie Kohn if you are a skeptic.  Here is a link to an interview with the author that is a quick and interesting read from Educational Leadership magazine. The momentum in schools to give rewards to kids is endemic.  I often find myself agreeing to different reward systems in the interest of "collaboration".  This year I will do better about making a stand.

3) Do not use praise to manipulate kids into doing something.

But it works so well!  "I love how Johnny is sitting!"  Boom, all the kids sit just like Johnny.  They want the praise candy too.  Growth mindset it about developing the intrinsic desire to improve yourself- not about pleasing others.  My praise candy will eventually erode my students' desire to work hard at self control.  Even if it works really well for the teacher.  *This is distinct from reinforcing language, which is not designed to manipulate other children.

4) Do not praise the product of a child's work without praising the the process that created it.

If you praise the product, say a 100% on a math test, it can actually diminish the student's desire to work.  See Steve Gardiner, Stop the Pay, Stop the Play for more details on this.  The main idea is that how the student was able to achieve the result is far more important than the result itself when building growth mind sets.  In addition, recognizing and celebrating growth is far more important than only recognizing the students who meet certain benchmarks.  For one child, 100% on a math test is easy.  For another child, growth from 50% to 70% on the math test takes an incredible effort.

So that's my list of what not to do.  I would love to hear from my readers their thoughts and insights in the comments section.  Stay tuned for my next post about my Growth Mindest Game Plan.

*Reinforcing Language: This is noticing what a child does well in order to reinforce positive behaviors.  It is different than praise candy because it done in private, or to a whole group.  It is mean to describe what was done well, and the process that created the positive outcome, so that the behavior can be repeated in the future.  In the about example you could say in private, "Johnny, I saw that you came and sat down right away.  That helped our team get started on our learning right away! What did you do that helped you get ready so fast?"