Growth Mindset - Not Just for Kids!

I've read and analyzed Shirley Jackson's The Lottery many times and have reflected on how damaging a fixed mindset can actually be. Yes, Jackson takes it to the extreme in her short story where a member of the community is stoned to death every year because that had been the way for so long. The main leader in the community, Old Man Warner, refers to those who have changed practice as a "pack of young fools" (Jackson). If you ask me, I'd take a pack of fools over the chance of getting stoned to death any day.

How does this relate to education? How many of us have heard someone resist change and justify resistance by insisting things be done they way they have always been done. If it's not broken, don't fix it? But, when you think about it, how do we know if it is broken or not? Should we just assume that everything can be improved? Does it have to be broken to be fixed?

I think back to one of my practicum in teacher's college. There were many SmartBoards throughout the school, but most of them were still in the box. Many in this school had a fixed mindset when it came to technology. I was told when I asked about the SmartBoards that the students had been learning fine without them. Why change practice? Why fix what isn't broken? It became quite clear that this school was filled with Old Man Warners.

Growth vs. Fixed Mindset

Perhaps one of the most frustrating situations a leader can be in is when they go head to head with an Old Many Warner. Old Man Warners lurk in every school. How do we address this fixed mindset in our colleagues? I've been to numerous profession developments addressing fixed and growth mindset in students, but what about in our colleagues? Carol Dweck, one of the leading researchers in the field of motivation and mindset, argues that teaching a growth mindset creates motivation, increases productivity, and enhances relationships. How do we encourage this kind of positive mindset in our colleagues who have had a closed mindset for so long? Dweck argues that there are four steps to changing from a fixed to a growth mindset:

1. Learn to hear your fixed mindset "voice"
2. Recognize that you have a choice
3. Respond with a growth mindset voice
4. Take the growth mindset action

Pretty straight forward if you realize that YOU need to change. But, how do you guide someone to that realization? According to Heggert in Developing a Growth Mindset in Teachers and Staff, in order to encourage change, a leader must do the following:

• Model a growth mindset;
• Create space for new ideas;
• Build time for self-reflection;
• Provide feedback to encourage growth.

It becomes obvious quite quickly, growth mindset can't be taught, but it can be learned. If you take those points above into consideration, it becomes very apparent that in order to encourage a growth mindset in staff, you must demonstrate the mindset yourself. Basically, you must walk the walk.

Leadership and Mindset

When we think about it, isn't that just transformational leadership in action? Leading through doing, leading by example. In that case, wouldn't it be good enough for the school leader to have a growth mindset and let it rub off on others? Hard to say. How much exposure is necessary? I think back to Longfield School in Darlington. Their educational leader, Keith, had a growth mindset. Some bought in, others didn't and left. Are there always casualties when to comes to encouraging the growth mindset. Will some people just never change? If that's the case, as leaders, I guess that is something we are just going to have to get used to.

Briggs, S. (2015). 25 Ways to develop a growth mindset. informED. 

Dweck, C. (2010). Mindset. 

Heggert, K. (2015). Developing a growth mindset in teachers and staff. Edutopia. 

Jackson, S., Oates, J., and Jackson, S. (2010). The Lottery in Novels and stories. New York, N.Y.: Library of America.

Me a Leader? No Thanks...

I’ve been a classroom teacher of some kind now for almost seven years. I’ve said all along that a role in leadership is something I am not at all interested in. Running a school? Having to listen to and try to fix everyone’s problems? Count me out. Up until a little while ago, my view of leadership was very narrow. I saw being a leader as being someone who has to bring the hammer down all the time. Someone who has to make tough decisions and stick with them. Someone who has to have thick skin (which I don’t). So, what am I doing here in this leadership and technology class? I’m quickly realizing that this might be where I belong and where I’ve already been for the past few years.

Leadership comes in all different forms. According to Business News Daily, there are 33 Ways to Define Leadership. Really? 33 ways? If that is true, we must all fit in there somewhere. Read through the various definitions, you will be hard pressed to not find a definition that describes you. Basically, being a leader is everything I thought it wasn’t and nothing I thought it was. It is strange that I had this narrow definition of leadership considering I’ve had the luxury and privilege of being surrounded by and enabled by an exceptional leader in my short career in education. Maybe my leaders were so exceptional, I didn’t even notice they were leading. I would like to take this blog post to share an experience in which I was influenced by great leadership without even knowing it.

The Early Days

I started my teaching career in Ontario after spending a year facilitating high school credit courses to adults on a small remote reserve in northern Alberta. Three reservations made up the Little Red River Cree Nation. This was a great experience for me and I learned a lot in a short time and had the opportunity to work with some amazing people. Upon returning back to Ontario I secured a long-term occasional (LTO) in a secondary level alternative program looking to expand to service English Language Learners (ELL’s) who were at the time not engaged in the public school system. Pretty tall order for an LTO. 

With my limited experience, I quickly realized I was in over my head. I reached out to the ELL consultant for my school board and she, with a background in elementary, stepped in right away to offer her support and resources. Right from the start, she told me that this was new to her and she had little experiencing working with and engaging secondary school aged ELL’s. However, she was willing to support me and connect me with the people I needed to help me.

All the Answers

Admitting you don’t have all the answers is very brave. I’ll be honest, when I reached out to this person I thought she was going to answer all my questions and give me a formula for success. To my initial disappointment, she had very few answers on how exactly I was to proceed. However, what she did do for me enabled me to find the answers for myself and build capacity by supporting and encouraging me. She was (and still is) a true leader. According to Hugh Arnold (2014), a contributor to The Globe and Mail, successful leadership is “about motivating people to do things that they otherwise wouldn’t have done.” I didn’t see it at the time, but by not just telling me what to do and listening to my concerns and working with me to find a solution she was being a strong and empowering leader. What ended up coming out of this problem was a board-wide resource to address the challenges I was experiencing. From that point on, given the tools and resources I needed to further my practice, I started to become a leader in my program and school. 

By admitting she didn’t have the answers, she was enabling and empowering me to become a champion and find them myself. I didn’t see it at the time, but as I start to delve deeper in to the theory of what makes a good leader, I am beginning to understand that a lot of my preconceived notions of leadership were incorrect.

Transformational Leadership in Action

What I had the chance to experience here was transformational leadership in practice. Transformational leadership is a leadership style that encourages positive change in those who follow (Cherry, 2016). My black and white definition of leadership as being someone who has all the answers and just tells people what to do is not leadership at all. Leadership, and more specifically transformational leadership, empowers and turns followers into leaders in their own right. Transformational leadership challenges and supports followers to advocate for themselves.

Arnold, H. (2014). If you’re a leader with all the answers, that means you don’t listen to your staff. The Globe and Mail. http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/careers/leadership-lab/leaders-dont-need-to-have-all-the-answers/article17376138/

Cherry, K. (2016). What is transformational leadership? Verywell. Retrieved from: https://www.verywell.com/what-is-transformational-leadership-2795313

Helmrich, B. (2016). 33 Ways to define leadership. Business News Daily. Retrieved from http://www.businessnewsdaily.com/3647-leadership-definition.html.