What's your Mindset?

Hi everyone, as the project comes to a close I thought it would be nice to try something fun! But first a little bit of backstory, when Carol Dweck and her colleagues went into classrooms to see the effect of mindset on grades they had every student take a survey to see if they either had a fixed or growth mindset.

They published their short 16 question survey online, you can find it here: https://mindsetonline.com/testyourmindset/step1.php

I encourage you to find out whether you have a fixed or growth mindset and share the results below. Usually, in a pool of people, about 40% of them have a fixed mindset, 40% have a growth mindset, and 20% have a mixture of both.

But what can you do if you find out that you have a fixed mindset, it's actually pretty easy to change. One of the ways is to notice when you start saying things like, "I can't do it," when you hear yourself say this, stop, and add the word yet to the end of that sentence. This simple word has massive implications. By saying 'yet' you're telling yourself that you can't do it right now, but you'll be able to do it eventually by putting enough effort in.

Another common way is to track your own progress. This lets you see how much you've improved over the course of any time period and can really help as a visual aid if you're not feeling motivated. For example, if you play the violin and are trying to improve, record a session on your phone weekly and listen to them so you know what parts you need to work on. Or if you're struggling in math graph your test scores on a line graph so you can see your improvement.

However, this is not a cure-all for laziness. In order to see the results, you'll have to put the work in and seek out help if you need it!

The Purpose of a Lit Review

They can be extensive and meticulous but are an essential part of any research project. Anyone who is writing research paper knows how much of a pain writing a literature review can be.

Now you may be wondering why anyone would put themselves through such a painful and grueling process. Do all researchers hate themselves? No...well most of them at least! Literature reviews do much more than just summarize and familiarize the reader with the topic. They give the researcher an opportunity to establish credibility and identify weak sources and areas for future research.

However, there is one major difference between a report and literature review. A literature review creates a foundation for the research project but creating a link between the question and evidence, whereas a report solely focuses on delivering information.

For example, in my project, my question was how is grit related to academic achievement and how can we change the way we teach to foster grit in the classroom. Then in my literature review, I used sources to show the relationship between grit and academic achievement, moved on to show how we are able to teach it in schools.

Hopefully, this was informative and maybe you learned something new!

Moving on to the Last Few Drafts of my Research Paper

At this point I have completed the literature review of my paper, I'll talk about the importance and purpose of these in my next blog post. The next round of editing will focus on the methodology, results, and recommendations section, these sections are much shorter and will be easier to edit. Other than that, there isn't much else to report, everything is coming together as I finish up my presentation!

An Interesting Demographic at Fountain Hills Middle School

Yesterday, I went down to Fountain Hills Middle School to interview some more teachers. I went to this school mainly to get a perspective on a classroom in a higher income area. What I found out helped me solidify my hypothesis on a couple questions.

I had no idea how close Fort McDowell was to Fountain Hills Middle School and this creates some interesting and pressing questions and concerns for classrooms. One of the teachers I interviewed said that native children were very quiet and reluctant to participate in class, this is a big problem for classrooms that focus mostly on discussion.

One teacher mentioned that they are seeing an interesting reaction to poverty in the area. For example, four times a year native families get Windfall checks to help them through poverty. Teachers know when families get these checks because students will often not show up to school and come back talking about all the trips and new things they got.

A Day at Palomino Primary

Last week I had the opportunity to shadow Ms. Garcia's classroom at Palomino Primary. She is a 1st grade teacher at a very low income school. In my life, I've never been to a Title 1 school and I never imagined how terrible the conditions were.

Don't get me wrong, the school itself was nice and well managed. But as I drove in I noticed tons of students without any supplies, not even a pencil. How can we expect kids to be motivated and succeed in school if they don't even have the supplies or support at home to do so? These are questions that need to be answered and fixed immediately.

When I got there I didn't expect much, but I was pleasantly surprised! The kids were and excited about school and learning. After a short breakfast in the classroom, kids came up to me and asked if I could quiz them on their vocabulary. All of these 1st graders were really motivated and wanted to succeed.

Palomino Primary used some of their own interesting strategies to promote growth mindset and grit. They use specific math programs that focus on process over outcome, there are signs in the classrooms that say everyone grows, and their are even huge displays on walls showing everyone's progress over the course of the year. This school is making small steps in the right direction to set their students up for success in the face of incredible adversity.

Here's an example of a display in a 2nd grade classroom at Palomino Primary showing how students have improved their reading skills over the course of a year. Also, you have to keep in mind most of these students are hispanic and speak little to no english a home.  

I think these lower income schools provide a unique perspective on my demographics question. When I go to middle or higher income schools, the most common response is that the teacher doesn't pay attention to these differences between cultures or genders in the classroom. While teachers in lower income areas agree that different people have different priorities about school.

This leads me to suspect that it is less of demographics issue and more of a socioeconomic one. One of the teachers I interviewed said, "In this lower income area, for most families, the priority isn't school, it's to survive."

What the Interviews tell us about Grit and Growth Mindset in Schools

From the interviews, I can start to conclude that teachers need to be made aware of these concepts and the ways to teach them.

Some of the teachers that I interviewed were actually already implementing strategies but were not aware that were doing so. By making teachers aware of these strategies they can recognize what they are already doing and what they need to be doing.

Additionally, it would be beneficial to find time outside of class or integrate a few lessons about goal setting into the curriculum. This would tricky in higher grades, especially in AP classes, because of time restrictions. One of the teachers I interviewed suggested having short five to ten-minute meetings during lunch for one on one goal setting.

However, I don't want to make any wild claims yet because I have only interviewed BASIS high school teachers. Tomorrow I am going to Palomino Primary to interview some elementary teachers to get their opinions on these strategies, this will also give me a new angle on my research because Palomino is in a low-income area. It will be interesting to see if the SES effects classroom culture or student motivation.

Walking Through Questions

Hi, everyone! This week I want to walk through questions I asked teachers, why I chose them, and what they revealed about different teaching styles.

The first question was a general open-ended one, it was, "What do you know about grit and growth mindset?"

Most of the teachers I have interviewed so far have not known what growth mindset is but have a general idea of grit. The most common response was something along the lines of perseverance and determination, which is fairly close to the actual definition.

The second question was, "What classroom strategies are you aware of the foster grit and growth mindset?"

This question was aimed at finding out what strategies teachers were conscious of in the classroom. I got a wide array of strategies, from making sure that students know that there are multiple ways to get the same answer to giving hints to students. Interestingly, teachers were not aware that how they praise students affect they way they learn.

The third question is, "Have you implemented some strategies like the one in the previous question or have you created your own. If you have can you please explain it in detail and have you seen a positive impact on students since you began using this strategy?"

This question's purpose was similar to the last, it was aimed at finding out how aware teachers were of strategies that foster grit. Unfortunately, since this concept was new to most teachers they weren't aware of many strategies. A solution to this would be to educate teachers on strategies to teach growth mindset and grit. Perhaps they will become aware of strategies they are already using.

The next question was "Do you think sitting down with your students at the beginning of the year and have them set long-term goals for that class and then meeting with them every so often throughout the year to keep track of their progress is possible in the classroom or devoting somedays to teaching grit? What about in an AP setting?"

This was aimed at determining if teachers felt that they would actually have time to address this in their classrooms. Based off of my research, it should be possible for teachers to teach this concept through their teaching style alone. However, teachers felt like they would not have the time to meet one on one with about 20 kids per class, especially in an AP class where time is crucial.

The final question was a demographics question, "Do you see that different types of students (girls, boys, white, black, Asian, Hispanic, etc.) learn about grit differently? Have to had to make any adjustments to your teaching style to accommodate for them?"

Most teachers see a difference between how boys and girls learn, not as much across cultures and ethnicities. The general consensus was that boys are more hands on, loud, and tend to answer questions more while girls tend to be quieter and focus on their individual work.