My Secrets to Surviving and Thriving as a Teacher

Some questions I used to get asked a lot as a veteran teacher are, What is your secret?  How is it that you have stayed in the classroom so long?  

I am going to share some of my secrets to surviving and thriving as a classroom teacher.  This is my 17th year in education.  For the last 16, I have lived the sometimes grueling life of an elementary classroom teacher.  I'm not going to lie- I have found myself browsing the Craigslist jobs section more than a few times.  Barista?  That sounds nice.  I like coffee...  But in the end, I gear up and step back in front of room for another lesson-  here is why.

1) Love.  I love my students. Their smiles make my day.  When I am feeling low, I visit my former students in the cafe during lunch. "MR. ANDERSON!!!"  They all want to see me, talk to me, question me about my gerbil and my own kids.  They share their triumphs and their struggles.  I realize that they love me too and it is just enough to get me through the day.  But just because I love my students doesn't mean I don't...

2) Go home and recharge. I pack my bag when the students do and I go home when they get on the bus.  How?  I accomplish all the things that MUST be done, and leave the rest for another day.  There will always be one more thing to do.  If I have done my very best and covered the essentials, it is time to go.  I need to recharge because I...

3) Understand the journey.  Teaching is long journey.  All great journeys are long, at times arduous, full of unexpected challenges, rife with times of self doubt and soul soaring epiphanies.  I know that each day is one more small part of this journey and I need to take my smalls wins and rest up for the next day.  I cherish this journey, as difficult as it is, because I
have a...

4) Mission.  My mission is the driving force when I am totally overwhelmed.  My students deserve the chance to choose their own destinies.  The fact is, if you have brown skin or live in a poor neighborhood, you have very little chance to get a decent education and go to college.  My students' zipcode and ethnicity can not be allowed to limit their opportunities.  To accomplish my mission I need to...

5)  Get a little bit better everyday.  I don't expect myself to be perfect.  I know I will make mistakes.  But each day is an opportunity to get incrementally better.  Those little wins add up to big successes over the long run.  Those successes will help my students live their dreams.  Though I know I can't do it alone because it takes a...

6) Team.  I am part of an amazing team of educators giving 100% everyday.  They support me when I stumble and forgive my imperfections.  My team inspires me when I feel like giving up.   Honestly, without my team I wouldn't be able to keep it up.   I hope I do the same for them.

I love teaching but it is one of the hardest jobs to master, stay sane, and stay balanced.  If you are a good teacher, no one is harder on you than yourself.  You beat yourself up about the mistakes you make and your missed opportunities.

Here is the truth about teaching- you will never master it and never be the perfect teacher.  But you will have amazing victories and moments of teaching nirvana.  You will make the lives of your students better simply by loving your hardest and performing your best.  And you know what else?  Yours students will always remember you for that love and effort, and be grateful.  You will change the course of the the rest of their lives.

“I alone cannot change the world, but I can cast a stone across the waters to create many ripples.”

― Mother Teresa

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?"