Growth Mindset Redux

Issues with the Growth Mindset and Grit

In my previous Growth Mindset plan, I discussed that since the COVID pandemic, we had seen a dramatic rise in anxiety and depression in students. Students had developed learned helplessness and laziness concerning school. Additionally, I have had several students require withdrawal from school to work on their mental health or inpatient treatment. Since then, I have seen an increase in student apathy. Students have a lack of interest or concern when comes to their education and grades, their peers, or their teachers. Although I believe there is merit to Dweck’s work, I am concerned about how her work has been billed as a panacea for ails the education system. I first became concerned about her research when she stated all 373 seventh-grade students she monitored were identical, except for their mindset (TED, 2014). How is that possible?? If I have learned anything in my 16-year career as an educator, no child is the same, and there are no magic bullets that will fix education!

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What is missing is when you simply rely on the Growth Mindset to help students grow; it does not consider the whole child. For example, in her book Brain-Changing Strategies to Trauma-Proof Our Schools: A Heart-Centered Movement for Wiring Well-Being,  Maggie Kline discusses childhood trauma, the brain, and behavior. According to Kline (2020), “More than 32 million children in the US suffer from trauma symptoms. Some have had adverse childhood experiences (ACEs), like neglect, abuse, violence, and loss, or have experienced distress from medical trauma and social injustice. Toxic traumatic stress shapes the structure and function of both brain and body, leading to anxiety, hyperactivity, aggression, shutting down, and acting out--emotions and behaviors that hinder learning and create classroom chaos”. How do teachers try to reach children in the face of trauma? How do we help students who cannot heal because they cannot process trauma themselves?

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One issue I have struggled with is the excessive amount of curriculum I must cover during the school year. To have a growth mindset, you need an opportunity to reflect on your mistakes and learn from them. How can students reflect on the power of “yet” when the curriculum moves so fast that they have no time to reflect? There isn’t much time to review the previous test because I have two days to teach the next unit, one to review, and another test on the fourth day! In lies one of the issues with grit. Leadership is never satisfied, evidenced by constant additions to the curriculum and expectations of consistently rising test scores, leading to student burnout. Why try harder and do better? They will only ask for more — the “curse of competence.”

Another issue is that perfection seems everywhere, and more than just academics. Students spend hours every day listening to social media influencers and celebrities that appear to have a perfect life, perfect house, and perfect hair and makeup at all times; usually, their appearance, unbeknownst to the kids, is a facade. Teachers and other professionals have a PLN. Why don’t we teach students to create a PLN that inspires them? I keep thinking about the scene in the Wizard of Oz where Dorothy realizes that the Great and Powerful Oz is merely a scared, lonely, small man pulling levers behind a curtain!

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Although I want students to improve in every aspect of their lives, many students may have a growth mindset, not necessarily for academics. When I often talk to struggling students, they are motivated in other areas of their lives: art, music, fixing cars, coding, just not 8th grade US History to 1877.