That’s why we’re here. Wouldn’t it be great if there was a quick-fix magic solution to encourage a growth mindset in your students?

Unfortunately, there’s no magic handout or silver lining.

• You can’t just add the word “yet” to every obstacle.
• The sun won’t just shine right away.
• Unicorns won’t sing because you have some inspirational quotes hanging on the wall.

(Believe me, we’ve tried.)

Teaching a growth mindset takes time. It’s about making some epic mistakes along the way.

We’re learning. Just like you. Here’s what we think we know:

Sound harsh?

Actually, Simon Sinek was talking about millennials in the workplace but Deep Patel writes on Forbes Magazine about how Gen Z are different, yet similar.

By the way,

• Millenials were born 1981-1996, so 24-39 years old,
• Gen Z were born 1995-2010, so 10-25 years old.

According to Sinek, these kids grew up with “failed parenting strategies,” but I would argue failed teaching strategies as well.

Students are told, “You’re special, you can have anything you want in life, and here’s a participation medal for coming in last!”

And yet, students in the real world discover they’re not special, you don’t get anything for coming in last, your mom can’t get you a promotion, and you can’t have it cause you want it.

So, now we have students in the workforce who can be hard working, idealistic, and feel empowered to “make an impact”, and yet don’t have the patience or resilience strategies.

As Sinek puts it, they see the goal of “impact” at the summit of the mountain but don’t realize they have to climb a mountain to get there.

Our students are immersed in technology. They’re used to putting filters on things in Instagram and make things sound awesome… when they’re not.

So when life gets tough, our students respond to these challenges, by turning back to technology for a dopamine hit, instead of developing resilience strategies.

Students in our classroom are growing up in a world with instant gratification. You can have anything you want instantly… except job satisfaction and strength of relationships.

“The overall journey arduous, and long, and difficult, and if you don’t ask for help and learn that skillset, you will fall off the mountain”

Simon Sinek, Organizational Consultant

How do we teach students to communicate? How do we teach kids the social skills that they’re missing out on? How do you build trust?

• Slow,
• steady
• consistency.

If you don’t have your phone… you just enjoy the world. And that’s where ideas happen. Ideas happen when our minds wander. That’s called innovation.

Do we develop these social skills in the classroom?

If Sinek has to argue that companies and industry have the moral responsibility to make up the learning shortfall, then I have to wonder if classrooms adequately prepare students for life after school in the “real world.”

Sinek is calling on business industry to help these amazing, idealistic, and fantastic students build confidence, learn patience,  learn social skills, and find a better balance between life and technology.

So what does that mean for teachers and the education system if businesses need to teach new employees transferable life skills that they didn’t learn growing up?

It means we need a paradigm shift in how we teach students.

• We’re not changing what we teach.
• We need to change HOW we teach

For many students, school is about playing the game, jumping through hoops, memorizing facts and giving the answers that the teachers want.

Am I wrong?

• The first place parents and students often look at when we get report cards are the marks (instead of comments or learning skills)
• Students will ask, “Is this for marks?” to decide how to approach an assignment
• Teachers are stressed out about “covering” the curriculum because there’s so much to do (in addition to all of the other things we do in the classroom.)

School often seems results-oriented to students (and parents).

How often have you heard your students say things like this::

• How well did you do on that test?
• What mark did you get on the report card?
• How fast did you run in that race?

Yup, there’s definitely a place for diagnostic quizzes, formative assessments, and summative evaluations. They can be great signposts to tell people if we’re headed in the right direction.

But in the 21st century, the kinds of problems that our students will be facing when they grow up haven’t even been invented yet.

And do we really want to (continue to) raise a generation of people who are waiting for an adult to tell them what to do and how to do it?

My self worth and identity are based on a number that someone else gives me. Hmm…

Very quickly, our students start to think of themselves as…

• Good at math or not good at math.
• A great athlete, or not a great athlete.
• A creative artist or just not that good at art.
• Smart or dumb
• A success or a failure

And that’s just the way it is. Or is it?

When we give feedback to our students, why not try to focus on process?

As teachers, we can put the emphasis on process in the way we give feedback during back to school activities and our day-to-day lessons.

It’s one simple change. But, it’s a big paradigm shift.

At the start of the school year, when we’re getting to know our students, we often give praise as we create a welcoming atmosphere.

• Wow, you’re a natural athlete!
• Oh my gosh, you’re so creative!
• You’re brilliant!

Here it is:

Good job! You worked very hard!

Instead of:

Good job! You’re really smart!

Note the emphasis on process? You worked hard and that’s why you did a good job.

Wait. That’s it? The magic phrase that teachers should say to students is, “You worked very hard!”

Yep.

Okay, the title, “One thing teachers should say at school” is pretty clickbaity. But, you knew that coming in.

Of course, there is no one magic solution to make students want to struggle through learning obstacles.

It’s not that easy. But, nothing in life worth having is easy. You knew that, too!

Helping to build character in our students is a process.

As teachers, we got into this gig because we’re passionate about the work.

Saying, “Great job, you worked hard!” is just the tip of the iceberg to shaping resilient students who are able to pick themselves up after they fail.

“Great job, you worked hard!” reinforces the idea that effort is required to lead to success. (And not that you did a great job because you are inherently brilliant.)

So, building character and resilience is an ongoing process. And, it starts with you saying, “Great job, you worked hard!”

QUESTION: Do I say, “Great job! You worked hard!” even if they haven’t worked hard?

No, of course not.

We don’t want to reward lack of effort. We want to recognize true effort when we see it to encourage more of that behavior.

After all, you do want to see your students genuinely try, don’t you?

A tougher question might be what happens if the student succeeds without needing to apply any effort at all?

Are they learning?

Or, better yet, what are they learning?

And what happens when eventually, later on, they finally hit a grade or a point where it doesn’t come easily any more?

Have they developed a mindset and cultivated an outlook on life that will help them keep going? Or, do they hit a wall?

Teacher Tip: This idea of a growth mindset comes from Dr. Carol Dweck’s book which is a fantastic read. She also has a TED talk which can be found here. 

PSST: We are not associated, affiliated or connected with her book. We simply read her book and tried to teach the concepts to our students. Where possible, we used her direct words or paraphrased her words when we’re explaining her research to our students.

The key take aways to tell students are:

• The ideas about growth mindset and fixed mindset are based on research.
• The power of our mindset is MORE IMPORTANT than ability.

Let’s use an example of how to give feedback on process (instead of ability) that we can do right from day one.

The first week of school activities tend to be fun, welcome back activities about getting to know each other!

Let’s say you’re doing a get to know you icebreaker like Name BINGO / Human BINGO.

Name BINGO or Human BINGO is a Back To School activity where students are given a BINGO card with different questions in each box. The goal is to go around the class, ask classmates questions, and collect signatures.

There are some questions like…

• Find someone who competes at a regional, provincial, or national level.
• Find someone who loves to read.
• Find someone who knows pi.

PSST! Read this post about how to turn this back-to-school activity into a more powerful communication mini-lesson.

Instead of complimenting your students based on intelligence or talent, try praising them on the process and effort:

How do I teach a Growth Mindset to students?

Great question! There’s no one way – different things will work for different peeps.

For some of us, the idea of a growth mindset represents a huge paradigm shift in the way we teach.

Teacher Tip:

Sometimes, you might have to give examples of different scenarios so students can figure out which answer to circle.

• If you think how smart you are is a core fact about you and it definitely can’t change, then circle “strongly agree”
• If you kind’ve think that, “Yeah, I guess how smart you are is part of you and it doesn’t really change,” then circle “agree”
• If you think, “No, you can change your intelligence and how smart you are, but only a little bit,” then circle “disagree”
• If you think, “This is absolutely wrong. How smart you are isn’t a part of you. It can change a lot,” then circle “strongly agree”

TEACHER TIP: As you go through the questions, there’s a screenshot of the handout to help visual learners.

You can also draw attention to the yellow highlight on the slideshow to show students which question we are on.

Taking up the Growth Mindset student survey is a great way to start talking about the difference between Growth Mindsets and Fixed Mindsets

The start of the school year is a fantastic time to have this conversation.

We all can find ourselves slipping into a fixed mindset about different obstacles, and when that happens, we can make a choice to choose to shift into a growth mindset.

Okay, so what do I do after I introduce Growth Mindsets and Fixed Mindsets to my students?

This is the key part.

Introduce the idea that strategies are things students can use to try to improve results. Success doesn’t happen randomly.

Whether we’re talking about reading a textbook, throwing a football, solving a math problem, or playing Fortnite, if we do certain things, we can get better results.

This is huge.

Students often think that working harder is the answer. And, it is, sometimes, but not always.

Lots of students think writing more will get them a better mark. But more is not always a four.

(In Ontario, we use levels. Level 4 is an “A”. Level 2 is a “C”. So, giving lots of level 2 work does not mean the work becomes a Level 4 in terms of complex thinking.)

Working hard is important…

Nope, you really don’t.

As a teacher, you’re busy doing a million other things in your classroom

☑ Trying to stay sane and maintain some sort of healthy work-life balance.

Want to empower your students with a growth mindset by using a strategy based approach?

We spent over 500 hours in prep work, research, and making growth mindset resources look pretty so that you wouldn’t have to.

We sell our lessons on the Teachers Pay Teachers marketplace. Here are some of the reviews:

No problem.

This is really important because you know your students best. So, we made it easy for you to switch things up to fit your reality!

We sell our Growth Mindset resources on Teachers Pay Teachers which is the world’s most popular online marketplace for original educational resources…

Yup. You already spend a lot of money on buying resources for your classroom.

Plus, you already spend so much of your life dedicated to your students and your classes. There’s a reason why the burn-out rate for teachers is so high.

We love what we do.

We do important work.

Teaching is who we are.

What’s in the MEGA BUNDLE?

We put everything you need to introduce a growth mindset to your students by explicitly teaching them about 21st Century Skills / Competencies.

• It currently has over 10 awesome teaching resources around 21st-century learning skills.
• We plan on adding more bonus goodies to the bundle!