 Hello, this week's Wednesday webinar, presented by Mali Ashoff, is on the growth mindset. Teaching a growth mindset creates motivation and productivity in the worlds of business, education, and sports. It enhances relationships. This is a quote by Carol Deweck. Dr. Deweck wrote the book Mindset, the new psychology of success, and is the guru of the mindset philosophy. This book has been used by business, by any organization that wants to grow and grow their people. There are a few other books that have started to come out about mindset. There's one on the mindset of coaching. But for the most part, this is really the handbook, and I would highly recommend it. It's a pretty easy read. So which mindset do you have? There's four statements here, and if you're listening, just jot down on a piece of paper one through four, and then as I read them, put an A, or the word agree beside it, or D, for disagree. Number one, your intelligence is something very basic about you that you can't change very much. Number two, you can learn new things, but you can't really change how intelligent you are. Number three, no matter how much intelligence you have, you can always change it quite a bit. And number four, you can always substantially change how intelligent you are. So if you marked your little agree or disagree, I am going to show you which ones tend to be the mindset of a more fixed mindset, and then those that are the thoughts or the ideas of more of a growth mindset. Now realize, neither one is right or wrong, and as we go on, you'll learn that if you're one way what you can do to be more of the other way, or vice versa. So if you said one and two that you strongly agree with them, you have more of a fixed mindset. If you more strongly agreed with three and four, you have more of a growth mindset. Here's a couple more sets of questions that will answer the same way. A, if you agree more with them, or D, if you more strongly disagree with them. You are a certain kind of person and there is not much that can be done to really change that. Do you more agree or disagree with that? No matter what kind of person you are, you can always change substantially. Number three, you can do things differently, but the important parts of who you are really can't be changed. And four, you can always change basic things about the kind of person you are. Now, if you chose one and three that you strongly agreed with them more than you disagreed, you are more of a fixed mindset. And if you chose two and four, you are more of a growth mindset. Here's another quote from Dr. Dweck. In a growth mindset, people believe that their most basic abilities can be developed through dedication and hard work. Brains and talent are just the starting point. So know that if you chose those statements that indicated you had more of a fixed mindset, that that's okay. It's a starting point. You can do things to change your mindset, to more of a growth mindset, to be more open-minded and willing to learn and take on new risks. So depending on the type of growth mindset that you had or that a student has, there's some statements that kind of go along with them. And I think as I read through some of these, you can imagine your students and you can hear those, or possibly yourself. Someone who has a growth mindset, they can learn anything. They believe they can learn anything they want to. When they're frustrated, they persevere. They want to be challenged. When they fail, they want to learn. I want you to tell me I try hard. I'm inspired to succeed. And my effort and attitude are a huge part in determining my success. In a fixed mindset, someone might believe they're either good at it or they're not. They're just done if they're not good at it. They won't even try. They get frustrated. They give up. They don't want to be challenged. They only want to do what they know they're good at or that they will succeed at. They want to be told they're smart. If you succeed, I feel threatened. I don't feel that I can grow and learn from that. And their abilities are determined, predetermined, and they can't change it. That's kind of like some of those statements I shared. Here's a couple more statements. Those that have a fixed mindset, they avoid challenges. They give up easily. They ignore the feedback. And those that have more of a growth mindset embrace those challenges. They work towards mastery. They learn from the criticism. Here's a short clip from Carol Deweck defining her definition of a growth at a fixed mindset. It is when students believe that their abilities can be developed. A fixed mindset is when they think, I just have a certain amount and that's it. And this isn't just kind of feel good talk. This is actually based in science that you actually, the brain actually does grow stronger. Neural connections actually do form when you struggle. In study after study, we have shown that kids who have a growth mindset get higher grades. It's not a choice between the outcome and the mindset. It shows that kids engage deeply and effectively in a learning process. The grades and test scores are a natural byproduct. Kids who are praised for their intelligence, our research shows, don't want to challenge afterwards. They don't want to work hard on something and if they hit difficulty, that's it. We praise or parents praise the process the child engages in. Their hard work, but not just hard work. Their strategies, their ideas, their focus, their perseverance, then the student learns these are the ingredients of success. If it gets harder, I'll just do these things. The important thing after hearing that short interview between Sal Khan and Dr. Deweck is to know that you can change your mindset. And that's what she was talking about. And there's a lot of ways as a teacher that we can change the mindset of our students. And Dr. Deweck talked a bit about the praise and that could be a whole another webinar on how to praise students' process, not their product. And then they don't focus on that so much. One of the ways, if you change your words, you can change your mindset. It's really, really that simple. And as I go through some of these ways you can change your words, you're going to see that it's not a curriculum. It's not changing everything. It's just truly changing the way we speak, the way we think about learning a bit. And you're going to see great results in attitude and in the mindset of your students. So here's a few different things. There's a bulletin board about change your words, change your mindset. And instead of, I'm not doing it good at this, maybe they say, what am I missing? What do I need to do to get better? I can't make this any better, but I can improve if I keep trying would be the growth mindset. So you can see, I can't do math. I'm good. I'm going to train my brain to be able to do this math. Mistakes help me improve. All those kind of things are more of a positive outlook or a growth mindset. There's one word that really can change everything, and that's the power of yet. So embrace the power of yet. When someone says, I'm not good at this, if we follow it up with yet, that means there's still time. There's still hope. There's a pathway to get there. I don't get it yet. This doesn't work yet. I can't do this yet. So as a teacher, if we start using that word yet behind all of those cants or not statements that our students make, pretty soon they're going to catch on, and they're going to embrace that power of yet. I want you to know that this is just a quick glimpse of what the growth mindset is and how powerful it can be. That if you want more information or if you would like me to come visit with you of how you can kind of focus on a growth mindset in your classroom or that power of praise and grades, how that kind of fits into that growth mindset, I would be happy to do that. Once again, thank you for listening and watching this webinar. If you have any questions or want follow-up information, you can contact me at molly.ashoff at esu8ne.org.