To simply say you have a growth mindset does not mean you actually have one

By definition, you cannot have a growth mindset when learning is anchored to standardized tests.

Standardized tests are a one game long season and your team has a 70% chance of losing. There is no room for growth when the results are predetermined. You can try again, but you have to wait until the next season and demonstrate growth in a different sport (content changes drastically each year).

Growth mindset is far more than simply telling a child “not yet” or “keep going.” It is a philosophical shift in thinking. It is more than the little white book that collects dust on the bookshelves of teachers nationwide, or the YouTube videos played in faculty meetings. Growth mindset requires a complete overhaul to grading, approach, curricula, assessment…

The approach can and does work, but only if carefully thought out and given time. The goal is not to walk away with a better grade, but for the student to walk away with a better understanding.

To simply say you have a growth mindset does not mean you actually have one. Education is overwhelmed with fad ideas crafted in the boardroom and passed down. It is time the ideas from the classrooms start making their way up.

What growth mindset looks like depends on the buy-in of schools and their communities, not corporations and their tests.

 

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Coloring Outside the Lines

I got my hair colored for the first time today. I always said I would go Ina May Gaskin gray, but alas, I couldn’t do it. There I sat, head full of tin foil, reasoning with myself that I was still a good feminist. Lucky for me, my thoughts were interrupted by the realization that the young woman painting my hair with goop was doing something quite remarkable.  Chemical reactions were happening on my head.

My mind jumped to thinking about vocational education.  I have discussed it before with my hair stylist.  She had shared with me that she was not a great student, and BOCES was what allowed her to get through. She left school every day to go to BOCES to learn the skills that she was now employing in her professional career. As I watched her in the mirror, I noticed all that she was actually doing, and it hit me that the current model of vocational education is so very flawed.

We should not be sending students out to learn a trade, once they have been deemed “not college-ready.” We should be highlighting the academic strengths that they have within the realm of their chosen trade.  Strengthen strengths. Build where the foundation is strong.

While she sees herself as a skilled hair stylist, but former weak student, I see her as an expert in her diverse field. She is an artist who is also a chemist, a business woman, an advertiser, and an expert in personal communications. Imagine the opportunity to have these creative, driven, highly knowledgeable young people included in the fabric of the traditional high school. Imagine their confidence and motivation when they are able to see the connections between their trade and their core classes. Instead of English class to prepare for the CC Regents, imagine “English for Entrepreneurs” and “The Language of the Contract”. We need to explore the idea of not only bringing CTE back to local high schools, but to bring it back into a non-college preparatory academic space as well, which is, quite frankly, where it belonged all along.