“Learning is easily a fundamental thing we do from the day we are born to the day we die… For most of our lives, it is natural, it is effortless, everywhere but (in) school.” (Thomas, A New Culture of Learning) Such innocence, an existing purity, uncorrupted, an inquiring mind awaiting input that will help to shape and fuel his/her approach to learning. Will it be a growth mindset or… will it be the unwittingly modeled fixed mindset?
Thomas’ line on the natural affinity for learning at birth is one of those axioms that need no disproving or testing of a hypothesis. Our own children were like sponges in soaking up what we had to give since they entered our world. Our daughter “effortlessly” wanted to be like her dad (daddy’s little girl), and my son (apart from being known as momma’s darling little man) did his best to catch up to his sister in abilities being born 5 years later.
Our daughter was home schooled for the first 5 years before being introduced into the public-school system, and our son started there to begin with. A stark contrast was observed. Our daughter was a few years ahead of the grade level she was placed in. My son was too, but not as much as his sister was. But in both cases, the experiences we had with both came when we were called in for parent-teacher conferences to discuss their 6 weeks progress report were revealing. Specifically, their teachers shared that there was not much they could do to challenge our kids based on the curricula for the grade level they were in. They had already mastered that level. Yet even more revealing was the next diametrically opposing statements their respective teachers made to us.
Our daughter’s teacher asked for permission to assign our daughter curricula that though 3-4 years above her grade level, commensurate with her ability to assimilate the material. “Oh yes, please Madame Growth Mindset Teacher, do your thing!” Our son’s teacher was not as innovative as our that of our daughter’s, but rather saw that she could not really do much to help him. Her response unfortunately was along the lines of brining him back to “normative expected behavior” and satisfying the mandated testing for “his level”. Naturally, you guessed it, we removed our son from that environment.
We have heard the age old adage, “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, but expecting different results.” (Albert Einstein). Our experience with our kids triggered a natural response in engaging our Passion, Imagination, and Constraint in how we played life’s game with them… because they were OUR KIDS. We were totally invested without prompting. When I taught engineering in high school, despite the many challenges made more difficult from prior years of stagnating and bringing them back to normative expectations, our department which I chaired were able to restore some of that “innocence of responsive” behavior to them by virtue of rethinking and recreating their learning environment. Make no mistake there was some serious heavy lifting that had to be done. Especially with colleagues who have been infected with years of the fixed mindset virus. They must change (or go), be aligned with the Wildly Important Goal (WIG), and totally invested (even if not at first, but ensure they will not be a deterrent) before deploying the significant learning environment for the kids. The same ground rules are also remarkably true in the corporate world, albeit a different audience. New game constructs, but the ground rules of engagement are the same. The “New Culture of Learning” is really a reestablishment of an old one that we invariably tend to get away from, in forgetting that our audience in truth are really OUR KIDS! Through that lens, I find that I am always ready to play.
References
Thomas, Douglas, September 2012. A New Culture of Learning. Retrieved from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lM80GXlyX0U&feature=youtu.be
