Reflections on Growth Mindset

The memories are decades old but it feels like yesterday. The tight elastic strap pulling against the base of my skull. The plastic cups of the goggles pinching against my forehead. My hands rotating back and forth as loosened up behind the blocks. There was always the humid drench that came with the pool, that feeling when you are wearing only a swimsuit, it's dark outside, and yet you are still a little sweaty. All of this simply before the race. Each race I entered, I knew I wasn't going to be the best that day. Growing up those honors belonged to Fetyko, Fetzer, Khoo, Hacker, Moss, or the Johnson brothers. I would be seeing them go flying by at some point. As I went away, the names changed to Walker, Blowers, Miller, Robbins, Kemeny and others, but the result didn't. It wasn't about that anyways. It really was never about that. Hundreds of times, I stood there behind the blocks, rotating my hands back and forth focusing intensely on how was I going to be better today. A buzz or gunshot later and I would be off, the water sliding around me as I hit the pool. A minute something later I would be done with the race and hyper-analyzing what went well and what went poorly as my chest pounded and my breathing fluttered. A ritual that occurred decades ago, week after week, for years in reality and for decades in my memories.

When I took my new job this year, a wise person told me don't make changes. Wait and see what is going on. Resist the urge to change it. I went into the role and kept that mantra going through my head, whether it was on the transition days before I started the job or during those first early months. Resist the urge to change things. No one wants their cheese moved by the hyperactive kid running up and down the hallway. Well, the no changes thing didn't last until lunch the first day. Due to a mixup with a training, I had ordered the staff pizza and we were eating it in the commons. The staff was dancing and I wasn't sure why. It took a couple of explanations because I was slow on the uptake, but apparently eating in the commons was taboo. I wasn't three hours into the job and changes were already occurring. A couple of months more and a couple hundred more inadvertent changes and we were rolling.

This year we have changed a lot. We started the year with very little social media presence, now as I go across twitter and instagram many of our staff members are sharing great experiences with their students. I walk up and down the halls and technology is a canvas through which differentiated learning is occurring. Each day I see amazing new things from our staff and our students. Change is everywhere. However, I think it's more than change. As a society we have tried this evolution of practice many ways. Systematic change through organizational theory. Individual change through who moved my cheese. Shift theory encouraging organizations to make adjustments. The most recent vintage is growth mindset. The difference between growth mindset and it's predecessors is that the locus of control is a combination of internal and external as opposed to solely external.

Our work on sharing our story through social media has come as challenge by choice. I introduced it as something I was going to do. We shared how it was done and more specifically how to see what I was producing. A few staff leaders jumped on and the stories became far more interesting. Each member not joining because they were obligated but rather because they chose. Over time others join and the fabric changed even more for the better. A year out it feels as if we have done this our whole careers. The stories are good and people have grown from sharing their stories and seeing the stories of others.

Our work on technology and instructional practice has come through committees. Some of which I attend and some of which I have not. Each committee has started us on a journey. Created opportunities and choices for staff to explore rather than recipes for staff members to follow. Opposed to the short time frames of SMART goals, we have created overly long time periods for people to explore. We talk of baby steps instead of giant leaps. Recognizing how you are improving on your growth journey rather than comparing yourself to your teammates or other teachers. All of us need to be on the journey, but not at the same point and not working at the same rate. Some will take baby steps and some will take giant leaps.

The results are amazing. I am learning to get comfortable with the idea that we have changed a lot. We simply have. However, these changes come as much from inside each of our team members as any district or building initiative. Growth mindset was here before I arrived, studied and explored by teachers within the school. It will be here for a long time. We may not be the best. However each of us are getting better every day and that is a cool thing to see, celebrate and be a part of. It's been a really long time since I last touched the pad at the end of the race, but that feeling of working with amazing teammates to improve each day, that is alive and well.