I could discuss this topic for hours on end. But I will try not to; No promises.
Before I begin, let me get this first thought off my chest; why are these speakers so boring? Oh my
goodness, I am getting drowsy just watching. The content is not the issue, the delivery is. This is the
third one in a row that I have watched and the body language and delivery is tired.
Finally! Wow! I mean WOW! Taylor Mali is heck of a speaker. I could listen to him all day and I just watched the clean one. His body language and his presentation are right on point. I was able to receive more from him in 3 minutes than I did from Dweck is 15 minutes; I just didn’t feel any passion from her about her topic.
Mali is right, teachers, good teachers are the difference in whether a child develops the correct tools or not. It starts with parents, but teachers have a huge responsibility as well. Too bad many of them are in it for the wrong reasons. We need to be accessible to the students. Not just regarding school, but about life as well. Teachers need to be approachable.
I enjoyed the videos by Mali, Mitra, and Robinson. I did not, however, like the Dweck video. She is
just boring and stale and she had no energy or excitement for her subject matter. This alone lends to
the idea of not really accepting her ideas. If a speaker, teacher, instructor has no passion for the subject, why should the student. As for Mali, I chose the clean video. It was short and to the point and he believes teachers do a lot more than just get paid to babysit, and he is absolutely right. Mitra and Robinson, I feel, believe that students can learn, whether there is a teacher presence or not. Students just need a direction, actual or insinuated. And any catalyst will do: Here is a computer. Now learn French. See you in a month. Children, kids, students are hard wired to learn from conception.
I believe that the others speakers would agree with Dweck in that a student’s mindset needs to be
changed in order for learning to happen. But this is nothing new. And it is not a difficult task, if
you, the teacher. Also have the correct mindset. Small victories turn into bigger victories. Take a bed wetter for instance. How do you instill a positive mind set? You wake them up every 2 hours to pee. They wake up in the morning and bed is dry. You do this every day for 3 months, 6 months, etc. Eventually, the child is getting up on their own, if needed, and wallah, winning mindset. It is not impossible to change the mindset of the student, but, it might take all year to do so. A growth mindset is learned behavior. Why would it be passed on? It would be naive to think that just because you have college educated parents that their mind set would be passed down through genetics. It has to be taught just like any other skill. Kids are not born potty-trained. They are taught. So why would learning be any different.
And this is where I believe that they would disagree with Dweck. Like Mira pointed out, if children have interest, education will happen. Children are hard wired to learn. They just need nudging. Whether it be installing computers in a wall and seeing what happens or using the granny method. Kids just need a direction.
As far as Robinsons perspective, he is right. We need to change the way we are teaching. The
“Paradigm” seriously needs to change. And just not at the K-12 level either. How many kids are getting
to college and can’t even sign their own name? How many college graduates are unemployed? The paradigm
has shifted and the same way of teaching and learning isn’t working. It hasn’t worked for 30 years.
From standardized testing to liberal arts, we are pumping out graduates like it is an assembly line.
It is not working. You can see that when these fortune 500 companies hire young people straight out of
college and then groom them and train them and after a few years it becomes stale. I believe this is
because these straight out of college hires have no real world learning. All they have is what they
got from books. And without the real world learning, they lost their drive or desire.
And though I did not like the way she presented her argument, she did have some good points; Yes,
failure is and should be an opportunity to learn. Take the light bulb creator: Legend has it that
Thomas Edison was asked if he felt like a failure because it took him 1000 tries to get it right. His
reply was no, and that he learned 999 ways to do it wrong.
I have already giving one example of incorporating a growth mindset, but that was for your child and
not necessarily for students. Although, the same principle can apply.
Two examples for students to encourage mind growth:
- I would break the class up into 3 or more teams, depending on the class size and they had to come up with
a team name. I wrote a series of 10 technology related questions on the board. I randomly selected
from the 10 questions and, as a team, they had to research and find the best answers and the fastest
to answer the question, each team member got that point. Each team had the opportunity to earn up to
10 bonus points from this activity. - I would have a box of various components that go inside the PC and hand each one of them at least one
component and had them spend 30 minutes research that item on line by each components identifying
marks: Serial number, model number, part number, etc. The students then had to stand up in class and
explain to the whole class what they had found about the component.
Learning in groups encourages a growth mindset. And given a specific direction, look this up,
encourages a growth mindset.
