Tag Archives: Mindset

Move the fulcrum to a positive mindset; find a path forward (TBT remix)

December 17, 2015 Jill Gough Leave a comment

Move the fulcrum so that all the advantage goes to a negative mindset, and we never rise off the ground. Move the fulcrum to a positive mindset, and the lever’s power is magnified— ready to move everything up. (Achor, 65 pag.)

“When people believe their basic qualities can be developed, failures may still hurt, but failures don’t define them. And if abilities can be expanded – if change and growth are possible – then there are still many paths to success.” (Dweck, 39 pag.)

How are we intentionally teaching growth mindset? How might we coach ourselves and our learners using Carol Dweck’s first steps to changing your mindset?

Step1. Learn to hear your fixed mindset “voice.”

Step 2. Recognize that you have a choice.

Step 3. Talk back to it with a growth mindset voice.

Step 4. Take the growth mindset action.

“Mostly though, I feel it in a changed attitude toward failure, which doesn’t feel like a setback or the writing on the wall anymore, but like a path forward.” (Coyle, 217 pag.)

Move the fulcrum to a positive mindset’ find a path forward was originally published on January 12, 2015.

Achor, Shawn. The Happiness Advantage: The Seven Principles of Positive Psychology That Fuel Success and Performance at Work. New York: Broadway, 2010. Print.

Coyle, Daniel. The Talent Code: Greatness Isn’t Born : It’s Grown, Here’s How. New York: Bantam, 2009. 217. Print.

Dweck, Carol S. Mindset: the New Psychology of Success. New York: Random House, 2006. 39. Print.

#LL2LU, Connecting Ideas, Learning, Reading

Intersection of struggle and hope (TBT Remix)

September 10, 2015 Jill Gough 1 Comment

The trick is to choose a goal just beyond your present abilities; to target the struggle. Thrashing blindly doesn’t help. Reaching does. (Coyle, 19 pag.)

When learners are thrashing around blindly, how might we serve as refuge for support, encouragement, and a push in a new direction? (And, what if one of the learners is me?)

Many days we stand in the intersection of struggle and hope.

We can observe our children carefully and look into their eyes and say, “Can I tell you what a great person you are?” and follow-up with concrete examples of the way they give amazing hugs and how kindly they treat their friends. This is the stuff of our most important relationships: Aiming to understand and be understood. (Lehman, Christopher, and Kate Roberts)

… some teachers preached and practiced a growth mindset. They focused on the idea that all children could develop their skills, and in their classrooms a weird thing happened. It didn’t matter whether students started the year in the high- or the low-ability group. Both groups ended the year way up high. It’s a powerful experience to see these findings. The group differences had simply disappeared under the guidance of teachers who taught for improvement, for these teachers had found a way to reach their “low-ability” students. (Dweck, Carol)

Move the fulcrum so that all the advantage goes to a negative mindset, and we never rise off the ground. Move the fulcrum to a positive mindset, and the lever’s power is magnified— ready to move everything up. (Achor, Shawn.)

To pursue bright spots is to ask the question “What’s working, and how can we do more of it?” Sounds simple, doesn’t it? Yet, in the real world, this obvious question is almost never asked. Instead, the question we ask is more problem focused: “What’s broken, and how do we fix it?” (Heath, Chip and Dan Heath)

And so the challenge of our future is to say, are we going to connect and amplify positive tribes that want to make things better for all of us? (Godin, Seth)

Move the fulcrum. Pursue bright spots. Amplify to make things better.

Aim to understand and to be understood.

Intersection of struggle and hope was originally published on December 10, 2014.

Achor, Shawn (2010-09-14). The Happiness Advantage: The Seven Principles of Positive Psychology That Fuel Success and Performance at Work (Kindle Locations 947-948). Crown Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

Coyle, Daniel (2009-04-16). The Talent Code: Greatness Isn’t Born. It’s Grown. Here’s How. Random House, Inc. Kindle Edition.

Dweck, Carol (2006-02-28). Mindset: The New Psychology of Success (Kindle Locations 1135-1138). Random House, Inc.. Kindle Edition.

Heath, Chip; Heath, Dan (2010-02-10). Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard (p. 45). Random House, Inc.. Kindle Edition.

Lehman, Christopher, and Kate Roberts. Falling in Love with Close Reading: Lessons for Analyzing Texts and Life. N.p.: n.p., n.d. Print.

“Transcript: Seth Godin – The Art of Noticing, and Then Creating.” On Being. N.p., n.d. Web. 09 Dec. 2014.

#LL2LU, Information Age Learning, Learning, Learning Progressions, Questions, Reading

productive struggle vs. thrashing blindly

May 5, 2015 Jill Gough 1 Comment

The trick is to choose a goal just beyond your present abilities; to target the struggle. Thrashing blindly doesn’t help. Reaching does. (Coyle, 19 pag.)

What if we teach how to reach? How might we offer targeted struggle for every learner in our care?

SMP-1: Make Sense of Problems and Persevere #LL2LU

Investing time in teaching students how to learn is never wasted; in doing so, you deepen their understanding of the upcoming content and better equip them for future success. (Jackson, 19 pag.)

If we are to harness the power of feedback to increase student learning, then we need to ensure that feedback causes a cognitive rather than an emotional reaction—in other words, feedback should cause thinking. It should be focused; it should relate to the learning goals that have been shared with the students; and it should be more work for the recipient than the donor. (Wiliam, 130 pag.)

$Math Flexibility$

When people believe their basic qualities can be developed, failures may still hurt, but failures don’t define them. And if abilities can be expanded – if change and growth are possible – then there are still many paths to success.” (Dweck, 39 pag.)

What pathways to learning are illuminated in order to highlight learning = struggle + perseverance?

Coyle, Daniel (2009-04-16). The Talent Code: Greatness Isn’t Born. It’s Grown. Here’s How. Random House, Inc. Kindle Edition.

Dweck, Carol S. Mindset: the New Psychology of Success. New York: Random House, 2006. 39. Print.

Jackson, Robyn R. (2010-07-27). How to Support Struggling Students (Mastering the Principles of Great Teaching series) (Pages 18-19). Association for Supervision & Curriculum Development. Kindle Edition.

Wiliam, Dylan (2011-05-01). Embedded Formative Assessment (Kindle Locations 2679-2681). Ingram Distribution. Kindle Edition.

#LL2LU, Connecting Ideas, Learning, Learning Progressions, TED talk

Productive struggle and essential feedback

February 6, 2015 Jill Gough 1 Comment

How might we teach and learn more about perseverance? I wish we could rephrase the first Standard for Mathematical Practice to the following:

I can make sense of tasks and persevere in solving them.

Just the simple exchange from problems to tasks make this process standard a little more global for learners. What if we encourage and expect productive struggle?

Some struggle in learning is good, but there is a key distinction to be made between productive struggle and destructive struggle. Productive struggle allows students the space to grapple with information and come up with the solution for themselves. It develops resilience and persistence and helps students refine their own strategies for learning. In productive struggle, there is a light at the end of the tunnel; learning goals not only are clear but also seem achievable. Although students face difficulty, they grasp the point of the obstacles they face and believe that they will overcome these obstacles in the end.(Jackson and Lambert, 53 pag.)

How might we make a slight change during the learning process to challenge our learners, to promote productive struggle, to persevere, and to learn, through experience, critical reasoning?

But many people are petrified of bad ideas. Ideas that make us look stupid or waste time or money or create some sort of backlash. The problem is that you can’t have good ideas unless you’re willing to generate a lot of bad ones. Painters, musicians, entrepreneurs, writers, chiropractors, accountants–we all fail far more than we succeed. (Godin, n. pag.)

What if we reframe “failure” as productive struggle and perseverance?

Level 4:
I can find a second or third solution and describe how the pathways to these solutions relate.
Level 3:
I can make sense of tasks and persevere in solving them.
Level 2:
I can ask questions to clarify the problem, and I can keep working when things aren’t going well and try again.
Level 1:
I can show at least one attempt to investigate or solve the task.

We cannot emphasize enough the power of feedback. Given the right kind of feedback, struggling students can gauge how they are doing and determine what they need to do to get to mastery. It can help students quickly correct their mistakes, select a more effective learning strategy, and experience success before frustration sets in. (Jackson and Lambert, 68 pag.)

How might we highlight many paths to success? What if we make paths to success visible enough for learners to try, risk, question, and learn?

When people believe their basic qualities can be developed, failures may still hurt, but failures don’t define them. And if abilities can be expanded – if change and growth are possible – then there are still many paths to success.” (Dweck, 39 pag.)

Dweck, Carol S. Mindset: the New Psychology of Success. New York: Random House, 2006. 39. Print.

Godin, Seth. “Seth’s Blog: Fear of Bad Ideas.” Seth’s Blog. N.p., n.d. Web. 06 Feb. 2015.

Jackson, Robyn R. (2010-07-27). How to Support Struggling Students (Mastering the Principles of Great Teaching series). Association for Supervision & Curriculum Development. Kindle Edition.

Connecting Ideas, Reading

Pathways to success trump fear of trying

February 2, 2015 Jill Gough Leave a comment

The prodigy was afraid of trying. “Everything I was going through boiled down to fear. Fear of trying and failing….If you go to an audition and don’t really try, if you’re not really prepared, if you didn’t work as hard as you could have and you don’t win, you have an excuse….Nothing is harder than saying ‘I gave it my all and it wasn’t good enough.'” (Dweck, 42 pag.)

I wonder how many learners (student-learners and teacher-learners) are afraid of trying and failing.

The result is a violent aversion to risk. You have no margin for error, so you avoid the possibility that you will ever make an error. (Deresiewicz, 22 pag.)

This means there’s a lot of intelligence out there being wasted by underestimating students’ potential to develop. (Dweck, 64 pag.)

When people believe their basic qualities can be developed, failures may still hurt, but failures don’t define them. And if abilities can be expanded – if change and growth are possible – then there are still many paths to success.” (Dweck, 39 pag.)

How might we highlight many paths to success? What if we make paths to success visible enough for learners to try, risk, question, and learn?

Deresiewicz, William (2014-08-19). Excellent Sheep: The Miseducation of the American Elite and the Way to a Meaningful Life. Free Press. Kindle Edition.

Dweck, Carol S. Mindset: the New Psychology of Success. New York: Random House, 2006. 39. Print.

Assessment, Grading, Learning, Questions

Being Slow…Mindset…2nd Chances…Learning (TBT Remix)

January 15, 2015 Jill Gough Leave a comment

Rule Three from The Talent Code by Daniel Coyle is SLOW IT DOWN.

“Why does slowing down work so well? The myelin model offers two reasons. First, going slow allows you to attend more closely to errors, creating a higher degree of precision with each firing – and when it comes to growing myelin, precision is everything. As football coach Tom Martinez likes to say ‘It’s not how fast you can do it. It’s how slowly you can do it correctly.’ Second, going slow helps the practitioner to develop something even more important: a working perception of the skill’s internal blueprint – the shape and rhythm of the interlocking skill circuits.” (p. 85)

We still take a lot of heat from our colleagues about 2nd chance tests. It makes many people, teachers and parents, uncomfortable.

About our version of 2^nd chance tests:

Our learners take the test; we mark (not grade) each problem as correct or incorrect, and return the paper to the child without a number-no grade yet.
Their job is to find, correct, and identify errors. We ask them to categorize an error as either a “simple mistake” or “needs more study”.
We also ask them to complete a table of specifications and determine their proficiency on the assessed essential learnings.
After all problems are corrected, students write a reflection about their work.
Armed with the experiences of teamwork, feedback, and self-assessment, students are given a 2^nd Chance test and are tested on only the problems missed during the first testing experience.
The final test grade combines the correct work from the first test with the work from the 2^nd Chance test.
Yes, it is completely possible to bomb the first test and end up with a 100 in my grade book.

My assumption is that this discomfort comes from how non-traditional – radical – this concept comes across. Just because it is different does not make it a bad idea, does it? The discomfort comes from gut-reaction or theory rather than practice. Shouldn’t you try it? What do learners say?

Here’s what some of my learners say.

“If you give your best effort the first time around, you will have learned more in the process and the second time around will be less stressful therefore making the hard work the first time more rewarding. I think that the second chance test is a very valuable learning technique. Even after that unit is complete, it shows you where you need to improve before you start building on those concepts. So far this year, I have seen great improvement in my learning from my previous years in math. This year it has all started clicking, and I am excited about the new units to come.”
~CM

“Before we jump into a new chapter, our class usually takes a formative assessment to tell us where we are and what we know before we actually start learning from Mrs. Gough. I take these seriously because I think they really do help. If I can see where I am in the beginning and then where I am in the end, I can see how much I’ve learned and accomplished.”
~ MC

In Mindset, Dr. Carol Dweck writes

“When people believe their basic qualities can be developed, failures may still hurt, but failures don’t define them. And if abilities can be expanded – if change and growth are possible – then there are still many paths to success.” (p. 39)

Move the fulcrum to a positive mindset; find a path forward

January 12, 2015 Jill Gough 2 Comments

Move the fulcrum so that all the advantage goes to a negative mindset, and we never rise off the ground. Move the fulcrum to a positive mindset, and the lever’s power is magnified— ready to move everything up. (Achor, 65 pag.)

“When people believe their basic qualities can be developed, failures may still hurt, but failures don’t define them. And if abilities can be expanded – if change and growth are possible – then there are still many paths to success.” (Dweck, 39 pag.)

How are we intentionally teaching growth mindset? How might we coach ourselves and our learners using Carol Dweck’s first steps to changing your mindset?

Step1. Learn to hear your fixed mindset “voice.”

Step 2. Recognize that you have a choice.

Step 3. Talk back to it with a growth mindset voice.

Step 4. Take the growth mindset action.

“Mostly though, I feel it in a changed attitude toward failure, which doesn’t feel like a setback or the writing on the wall anymore, but like a path forward.” (Coyle, 217 pag.)

Achor, Shawn. The Happiness Advantage: The Seven Principles of Positive Psychology That Fuel Success and Performance at Work. New York: Broadway, 2010. Print.

Coyle, Daniel. The Talent Code: Greatness Isn’t Born : It’s Grown, Here’s How. New York: Bantam, 2009. 217. Print.

Dweck, Carol S. Mindset: the New Psychology of Success. New York: Random House, 2006. 39. Print.

#LL2LU, Connecting Ideas, Reading

Intersection of struggle and hope

December 10, 2014 Jill Gough 2 Comments

Many days we stand in the intersection of struggle and hope.

But some teachers preached and practiced a growth mindset. They focused on the idea that all children could develop their skills, and in their classrooms a weird thing happened. It didn’t matter whether students started the year in the high- or the low-ability group. Both groups ended the year way up high. It’s a powerful experience to see these findings. The group differences had simply disappeared under the guidance of teachers who taught for improvement, for these teachers had found a way to reach their “low-ability” students. (Dweck, Carol)

And so the challenge of our future is to say, are we going to connect and amplify positive tribes that want to make things better for all of us? (Godin, Seth)

Move the fulcrum. Pursue bright spots. Amplify to make things better.

Aim to understand and to be understood.

Dweck, Carol (2006-02-28). Mindset: The New Psychology of Success (Kindle Locations 1135-1138). Random House, Inc.. Kindle Edition.

Heath, Chip; Heath, Dan (2010-02-10). Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard (p. 45). Random House, Inc.. Kindle Edition.

Lehman, Christopher, and Kate Roberts. Falling in Love with Close Reading: Lessons for Analyzing Texts and Life. N.p.: n.p., n.d. Print.

“Transcript: Seth Godin – The Art of Noticing, and Then Creating.” On Being. N.p., n.d. Web. 09 Dec. 2014.

Assessment, Learning, Synergy 8

Reflecting from aFAAR

May 10, 2011 Jill Gough Leave a comment

In the Junior High, tis the season of conducting Student Course Feedback and, for some, it seems, completing Peer Visits – two of the five components of our Faculty Assessment and Annual Review (FAAR) process. Additionally, a third component of our formative assessment plan – Admin Observation – has been occurring all year. After seeing the note “re-review and process Synergy 8 SCF” on our respective to-do lists for months, Bo Adams and I have finally spent five meetings of second period reviewing and reflecting on our Synergy 8 student course feedback (SCF). Not only did we re-review the feedback to reconsider how things went during the first-semester course, but we also revisited the data in May so that we could pre-plan more effectively for the next iteration of Synergy 8. As we returned to the SCF and discussed the results, we remembered connections in the data that linked to things we read in our peer visit summaries and admin observation notes. We were reminded that student course feedback does not exist by itself. The components of our FAAR process are not intended to be isolated, siloed pieces of professional learning. They can be wonderfully integrated and whole. Also, they are not intended to be summative or evaluative – they are not judgmental pieces of professional evaluation. They are meant to be formative…lenses through which we can view our teaching and learning so as to grow and develop as educators…so that we can adjust our course.

What’s more, by reviewing and reflecting together, we enhanced our field of view and gained richer understanding from the blend of each other’s varied perspectives and reactions. During each of the five periods that we engaged in this collaborative work, we would independently review the data and write to the prompts on the narrative summary tool (“option #2”) for reflecting on one’s SCF – one reflective prompt at a time. Then, we would read and discuss each other’s responses. While this took more time than working through the reflection alone, we both believe we benefitted immensely from the writing, sharing, and dialoguing. We missed things in our individual reflections, but very little fell through any cracks by canvassing the feedback as a team of critical friends.

To share our system of feedback, we decided to use an online, cloud-storage, sharing tool called “Box.” By using Box, we could design some simple webdocs that literally show and archive the connections among the feedback and reflections. Box has a number of great features, including the ability to tag documents and post comments. To view our Box-stored system of feedback, please visit the “Synergy 8 – FAAR” folder.

Soon, our next collective endeavor will be to prepare our 2011-12 Goals and Self-Assessment (a fourth component of FAAR). Because we co-facilitate Synergy 8, we intend to employ the critical friends process again as we continue to prepare for our next team of Synergy learners. The manner in which we reviewed and reflected on our system of feedback has set up and primed our ability and enthusiasm to enhance the Synergy experience for the upcoming school year.

In addition to our course-specific questions, we are also engaged in thinking about some critical learning questions for ourselves and our FAAR process (and they may be good questions for you, too):

Can you learn more deeply reviewing feedback with a colleague? How can we assist each other in learning more deeply?
How can we build a common understanding of the needs of our learners? How can we find a richer understanding of ourselves as teammates and co-facilitators?
Do you have a team of critical friends? What feedback are you collecting and considering so that you can grow?
Would you learn more by sharing the results of your feedback with another for reflection and co-interpretation? How will we grow and learn together if we are not sharing our struggles and our successes?
What have we learned from this process that we can facilitate for our younger learners next semester? How can we model and implement a richer reflection and critical friends system as part of the course?

Note: This post is cross-posted at Bo Adams’s It’s About Learning.

Learning, Teachnology, Technology

It’s About the Learning, not about the Technology…or is it?

February 27, 2011 Jill Gough 2 Comments

Many of my tribe gathered and learned together this weekend. (If you have not read The Element: How Finding Your Passion Changes Everything by Sir Ken Robinson, run don’t walk to your preferred book supplier to read a copy.) The 2011 T³ International Conference begins today in San Antonio. As a regular practice, the 300+ T³ Instructors from all over the world gather on Thursday, the day before this conference, to learn in team, to work together for our professional develop. It is an amazing experience.

It has spurred more thinking about technology and teachnology. We say over and over again “It’s not about the technology; technology is a tool. It is about the lesson; it is about LEARNING.”

Is it?

If I don’t understand the technology, will I ever get to the content, pedagogy, and learning?

Ruth Casey and I, along with 6 other members of the TI-Nspire CX Publish View team, spent our Thursday together teaching and learning about Publish View for the latest version of TI-Nspire. It is SO COOL. You can drop images, video, hyperlinks, interactive spreadsheets, interactive graphs and so much more onto a sheet to organize resources and opportunities for learning. If you blog, you can think of it as a math-science dynamic glog (a graphic blog – see glogster.edu for another type of glog) where learners can interact with the science and the math. The new Publish View allows documents to be embedded; now our learners will be able to interact with the lesson online. How GREAT is that?

The Publish View team spent the day teaching the “how to” of using Publish View. We used Stopping Distances as our foundation. The physics, math, and application of the Stopping Distances lesson requires strong content and skill. My T³ tribe knows the math or the science or both. How many know both? Who could know it all? I want to know more about both the math and the physics. I want to know more about the social impact and ramifications of distracted driving. I want to know what I can do to help our communities experiences less of the tragic consequences of distracted driving.

I want to know more.

…and I am a teacher teaching other teachers. I want to be known as a learner. I want to lead learning, to be led to learning, to collaborate in learning.

The technology becomes teachnology for me. I can now wonder about the physics successfully and safely. I am motivated to find and interact with resources and to ask my favorite physics teacher to help me learn. Don’t you think your favorite English teacher will be all over the topic of distracted driving as will your favorite language teachers, art teachers, technology teachers, etc.? Can we find common ground to integrate our disciplines for and with our learners?

The Publish View of TI-Nspire software became teachnology for me because it prompted my learning; it spurs me to new levels of learning, inquiry, and collaboration. The teachnology offered me the opportunity to think creatively, to integrate ideas from multiple sources, to blend and blur content lines, and to need to work collaboratively with a team that spans multiple disciplines.

If we value problem-finding as much as problem-solving, then we must learn to utilize teachnology to prompt learners to ask questions, to investigate, to discover, and to collaborate.

In our session Thursday, we never got to the math, science, or social lesson
…or did we?

In many cases, it is about the technology. The technology must become teachnology. We need our learners to problem-find and problem-solve. We aspire to facilitate and motivate self-directed learning. We value creativity, collaboration, and critical-thinking. This compels us to understand that is not about Mac vs. PC, iPad vs. tablet, iPhone vs. Blackberry, dry erase markers vs. colored chalk. It is not about being 1:2, 1:1, 2:1. (I’m well past being 1:1; aren’t you?)

It is about experience, inquiry, discovery; it is about learning – all of which can be accomplished without technology IF we are satisfied and willing to stay in a closed community of learners that we can see and talk with daily. But, if we want to broaden your community of learning and support, don’t we need technology? If we want to learn, serve, and lead with others, don’t we want and need to be more globally connected?

Learning something new is difficult. It takes patience and perseverance. Shouldn’t we model this for our learners?

Now is the time. The negative self-talk has got to stop. We can do this. Our expectations have to rise. We must believe in the best of ourselves and others. We should stop making excuses and learn. We need technology; we need teachnology. Stop saying “I can’t or they can’t.” Let’s change our language to “Can you help me? Can I help you?” Isn’t that what we want our learners to do? How many times do we coach our students – complain, actually – about that very phrase? Stop saying “I can’t or we can’t.” Change the language to “Can you help me? Will you help us?” Stop saying what we can’t do. Focus on what we can do. We are learners!

It is about technology and teachnology.

It is about learning and Learning!

Experiments in Learning by Doing

Tag Archives: Mindset

Move the fulcrum to a positive mindset; find a path forward (TBT remix)

Intersection of struggle and hope (TBT Remix)

productive struggle vs. thrashing blindly

Productive struggle and essential feedback

Pathways to success trump fear of trying

Being Slow…Mindset…2nd Chances…Learning (TBT Remix)

Move the fulcrum to a positive mindset; find a path forward

Intersection of struggle and hope

It’s About the Learning, not about the Technology…or is it?

Seeking brightspots and dollups of feedback about learning and growth.

please share:

Like this:

please share:

Like this:

please share:

Like this:

please share:

Like this:

please share:

Like this:

please share:

Like this:

please share:

Like this:

please share:

Like this:

please share:

Like this:

please share:

Like this:

Seeking brightspots and dollups of feedback about learning and growth.