Continuing our Learning about Mindset

This past November, I blogged about Mindset and how we, both staff and students, are learning about the ideas and implications associated with mindset. I also announced that we are attempting to establish a growth mindset throughout Riverside Elementary School. In her book, Mindsets in the Classroom, Mary Cay Ricci defines growth mindset as a belief system that suggests that one's intelligence can be grown or developed with persistence, effort, and a focus on learning.

In our efforts to establish a growth mindset, certain staff have volunteered to participate in a book study. Beginning in 2015, teachers (including myself) have been reading and reflecting about Mary Cay Ricci's book. Our book study is set-up to allow our reflections to take place via a blog that I've created. 

A screenshot from my computer of our blog to give you a better idea of how we use it and what it looks like

Worth mentioning is that once I set-up our book study blog, I reached-out to Mary Cay Ricci via Twitter to tell her about what we are doing. She has been very kind in connecting with some of our teachers, and contributing by commenting on our blog. In fact, Riverside Elementary School and our book study blog is going to be featured in chapter five of her follow-up book Ready-to-Use Resources for Mindsets in the Classroom: Everything Teachers Need for Classroom Success scheduled to be released July 2015.

I could not be more pleased with the learning that has and continues to take place through our book study blog.

As a result, we have continued this learning for all teachers and students. Last week, Ms. DeLacy, our school counselor, and myself delivered additional mindset professional development for our teachers. At the end of our session, we solicited feedback from teachers regarding their input for next steps of our mindset learning. Some of the really great ideas that we will now plan include:

• creating and sharing a common mindset vocabulary and definitions for staff, students, and parents to use
• creating and sharing a shared mindset resources page containing titles and links to books, articles, video clips, websites, etc.
• and gauging interest in the possibility of a setting-up a book study of Carol Dweck's Mindset via blog for parents, and/or hosting a mindset night for families at Riverside Elementary School

Michael Jordan's "Failure" Nike Commercial

If you looked closely at my screenshot, above, you'll notice that it referenced Michael Jordan. Michael Jordan is considered by many to be the greatest basketball player that's ever lived. He wasn't perfect, however. In fact, like he says, he's failed over and over again. But Michael Jordan uses his failures to his advantage. He learns from his failures and is motivated by his failures to succeed the next time. That is why Michael Jordan is symbolic of the growth mindset.

Wacky Wednesday Penny Drive on March 11th

Recently, our school community lost a friend. At the start of the school year, Steve Harland, our former custodian, discovered that he had terminal cancer. This tragic news resulted in Steve taking a leave of absence from his duties at Riverside Elementary School. Last month, Steve passed away...


When the make-up of our K-2 Student Advisory Team was reconfigured to start the third quarter, I asked them the same question that I ask every student advisory team during our first meeting. I asked them if they were able to change something about our school, what change would they make. After spending some time brainstorming two ideas began surfacing to the top. The K-2 Student Advisory Team wanted to 1) upgrade our playground and 2) do some sort of a fundraiser.

Through conversation facilitated by our school counselor, Ms. DeLacy, and myself, we discussed multiple things. We discussed how our Elementary Support Organization wrote (thank you!) and was awarded a $45K grant from the Washington County Riverboat Foundation (thank you!) to upgrade a majority our playground this upcoming spring. We discussed fundraisers, and how if that was the avenue that we went down we would need to be raising money specifically for someone or something. One of the students in our group, knowing that Steve had been gone from work for an extended amount of time and that he was really sick, recommended that our fundraiser benefit Steve.

Along the way our thinking shifted from doing a fundraiser for Steve, to doing a fundraiser to add a buddy bench to our playground. A buddy bench is a bench that will promote friendship on our playground at our school. We also decided that we could inscribe the back of our buddy bench with some sort of tribute to Steve that would help us remember him.

...I was fortunate enough to speak with Steve just days before he passed away. I was able to inform him of our idea for how we planned to remember him at school; he was honored to be a part of the work that we are planning.

Parents of students at Riverside Elementary School - look for a note to come home this Friday, March 6th via Friday folders that will outline our Wacky Wednesday penny drive that we are planning for March 11th to raise money for a buddy bench that will help us to remember our lost friend.