Doing Something
On the door to my office, I have a poster of the following quote from Neil Gaiman, one of my favorite authors:
I hope that in this year to come, you make mistakes.
Because if you are making mistakes, then you are making new things, trying new things, learning, living, pushing yourself, changing yourself, changing your world. You're doing things you've never done before, and more importantly, you're Doing Something.
So that's my wish for you, and all of us, and my wish for myself. Make New Mistakes. Make glorious, amazing mistakes. Make mistakes nobody's ever made before. Don't freeze, don't stop, don't worry that it isn't good enough, or it isn't perfect, whatever it is: art, or love, or work or family or life.
Whatever it is you're scared of doing, Do it.
Make your mistakes, next year and forever.
I think this idea is at the core of promoting a growth mindset in my students. My goal, not just in my class, but in my role as the librarian, is to help my students to develop a lifelong love of learning. In order to do this, to keep growing and improving, students need to make mistakes. They need to take chances, and learn from both the positive and negative results. If students don’t think that this is possible, thinking that their intelligence and ability are fixed, then there is no reason to keep trying to learn. They’ll freeze, stop doing the things they are scared of, and get stuck.
"Squirrel stuck in a jar" Jeremy Neil December 9, 2014 via YouTube Creative Commons licensing
If I want to foster an environment where my students believe they can grow, I need to set an example. I need to be unafraid to try new things, and to take risks in the classroom. I need to be honest about where I’m stuck, and push myself out of the ruts. Most importantly, I need to make that process visible to my students. They need to know that there are times when we’re trying something new, and that I don’t know how it will work out, but that I’m willing to try it. When I make a mistake, they need to know that it’s okay to admit to a mistake, ask for help, and work through it, because it means you’re Doing Something.
"problem solving in program: solution underway from museum of mathematics" justgrimes March 29, 2013 via Flickr Creative Commons licensing
A big part of promoting a growth mindset in my students is helping them develop strategies for working through a problem. Even if the problem doesn’t get solved, the process of creating and working through a strategy will help them to grow as learners. Fortunately, a large part of the curriculum I work with lends itself to building those strategies and skills. It’s also one that makes it easy to promote the concept of “yet.” The message that I’ve always given my students is that while what we are doing might be a challenge now, it’s something that gets easier the more you do it. The material that we’ll be exploring in the digital literacy class that I’m developing is designed to be an introduction to a set of skills that will be built over a lifetime, so it’s an ideal setting for a “yet” mindset, provided that the assessments are built to reflect growth and effort on the part of the students.
One of the things that I want to ensure I do as I try to build the environment for a growth mindset is to make it seamless. I don’t want the promotion of this idea to seem stilted or forced, like I’m checking off a box on a list. That means that it needs to be built in from the bottom up. In looking at the 3 column table that I created for my digital literacy class, I seem to have unwittingly provided many opportunities to promote growth. A large part of the class is designed around failure; students are expected to make mistakes and then try again. They will be keeping a research journal to explore that process, writing reflection pieces, and working with other students to share and critique one another’s strategies. There are also materials that we’ll be using in class that I think will help promote the growth mindset. We’ll be using a lot of games, which will allow them to focus on strategy and problem solving. I’m planning to include this video as an introduction to why games are so important, and how the skills developed during gaming can translate to growth and success in real life. Jane McGonigal, the speaker, connects gaming to creative problem solving, and models what the growth mindset looks like in action.
I’m going to make mistakes as I forge ahead with the digital literacy class. I’m probably going to make a lot of mistakes. I hope they are glorious mistakes, and that no matter what, I keep forging ahead. Because, in the course of making those mistakes, I want to be Doing Something.
References
Dweck, C. (n.d.). How can you change from a fixed mindset to a growth mindset? Retrieved June 30, 2016, from http://mindsetonline.com/changeyourmindset/firststeps/index.html
Gaiman, N. (2011, December 31). My new year wish [Blog post]. Retrieved from http://journal.neilgaiman.com/2011/12/my-new-year-wish.html
TED. (2010, February). Jane McGonigal: Gaming can make a better world [Video file]. Retrieved from https://www.ted.com/talks/jane_mcgonigal_gaming_can_make_a_better_world?language=en#t-251371
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