Counselor Coffee and Conversation: Fostering a Growth Mindset

Learning from Failing

Yolanda Stefanou Faerber, School Counselor,

Westbrook Elementary School

September 27, 2023

Focus for today

• Connection between Growth Mindset and Motivation
• Compare Growth vs. Fixed Mindset
• We will discuss how what one believes about their intelligence impacts their achievement
• We will discuss the general concept of learning from failing
• Steps parents can take to allow their child to fail and learn from it

Motivation, Growth Mindset and �School Anxiety

• There is a direct correlation between having a growth mindset and intrinsic motivation.
• A growth mindset is the belief that intelligence and awareness improves through study and practice. Children with a growth mindset tend to see challenges as opportunities to grow because they understand that they can improve their abilities by pushing themselves. If something is hard, they understand it will push them to get better.
• Therefore, a growth mindset contributes to better success in relationships and in school. It promotes a willingness to take on new challenges, thereby reducing unhealthy stress and anxiety associated with making friends and performing in school.

Fixed vs Growth Mindset

Students with a fixed mindset believe that their own intelligence and talent are innate traits that don’t change. For example, they might say, “I just can’t learn math.” These students typically worry about not looking smart, get upset by mistakes, and give up sooner on tough tasks.

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Fixed vs Growth Mindset

• Students with a growth mindset believe that ability can change as a result of effort, perseverance, and practice. They frequently say, “Math is hard, but if I keep trying, I can get better at it.” Students with a growth mindset see mistakes as ways to learn, embrace challenges, and persist in the face of setbacks.

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What you believe impacts

what you achieve

• Whether or not students are aware of their mindset, a broad body of research has shown that what they believe about their own intelligence and abilities can affect so many aspects of their lives.
• Academically: Children’s effort, engagement, motivation, and achievement as measured by test scores, school grades, passing rate in post-secondary education, and other metrics is impacted by their belief about their intelligence.

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What you believe impacts

what you achieve

• Socially and emotionally: New friendship dynamics and conflict continuously and naturally emerge. Each provides an opportunity to practice social-emotional skills and learn to manage uncomfortable emotions and situations in healthy ways. A growth mindset keeps the focus on practicing these skills and allowing for mistakes in the process. A growth mindset is especially valuable for working with young children. They enter school needing to learn several new tasks, such as managing their emotions, teamwork, and problem solving.

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Two Mindsets Graphic�

What are the consequences of thinking that your intelligence or personality is something you can develop, as opposed to something that is a fixed, deep-seated trait?

Your view of yourself can determine everything. If you believe that your qualities are unchangeable — the fixed mindset — you will want to prove yourself correct over and over rather than learning from your mistakes.

Concept of “Productive Struggle”

Motivation and Persistence

• When a learning goal is clear and the level of challenge is not too low or too high, students are more likely to be internally motivated to engage in productive struggle to achieve the goal.
• Opportunities for choice, collaboration, use of interesting texts, and hands-on activities bolster student motivation, while too many competing demands for attention can diminish student resolve to persist toward an academic goal.
• Motivation for productive struggle requires a growth mindset; the understanding that success is a result of effort more than of raw ability.

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Concept of “Productive Struggle”

Support and Feedback

• Struggle in academic learning contexts is not productive when students become frustrated because the goal is unclear or far out of reach, they do not feel safe to fail, or they do not receive adequate, appropriate support.
• Struggle can be destructive in this situation, and we need to intervene after finding that children are not making any progress and feeling that their efforts are pointless.

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Concept of “Productive Struggle”

Effective Feedback

• Effective feedback makes clear to children what the goal is, what progress they are making toward that goal, and what they need to do next to make better progress.
• Instead of merely correcting childrens’ errors, effective feedback guides students to develop better strategies for processing and understanding the material so that they gain mastery, confidence, and motivation to continue to invest effort in productive struggle.

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Learning from failing

Learning from failure can build your child’s self-awareness and help them become better self-advocates. Your child may need support to be more willing to take chances and make mistakes.

When your child says “I can't do it,” explain how this is something that they can’t do yet. Every time they do something wrong, they are learning how to succeed at the task.

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Learning from failing

Reflection

To help children learn from failure, ask them to reflect on what happened and problem-solve for next time. Praise them if they stay calm in response to the disappointment. It is also important that children learn how to acknowledge others who may have succeeded in the same situation.

Children learn best from failure when there’s time for feedback and reflection. This sounds time-consuming, but it doesn’t have to be. It could be as simple as a quick discussion of what went wrong and how to fix it next time.

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Learning from failing- when to step in

• Do no let kids fail if it could cause danger to their physical or emotional health. Avoid putting children in situations where the odds are stacked against them. An example would include a situation in which they haven't had a chance to prepare or if they don’t have the same resources as others to succeed.
• A good guideline is to let kids fail when they have a good shot of getting better at problem-solving the next time. This applies to whatever they’re doing — reading, playing a sport, or participating in a club. If they have no chance of success because of lack of skills or strategies, constant failure only makes things worse.

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How do I let my child fail?

There are several steps in this process:

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1. Demonstrate empathy. Empathize with your child and notice if they are in distress. Instead of saying “It’s okay. You will do better next time.” Say “I see you’re really disappointed. I know you wanted to do better.”

2. Be a model of “failure” for your child. You can share that failure is a part of life and it happens to everyone, even you. Share examples of “failures” you have had.

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How do I let my child fail?

There are several steps in this process:

3. Use it as a teachable moment. A child’s failure is a chance for parents to teach acceptance and problem-solving skills. You and your child can try to come up with what they could do the next time for a better chance at success. For instance, could they study differently or talk to the teacher about any problems they’re having before a test? This is a great time to teach about accepting the situation for what it is and building frustration tolerance, while also exploring what else could be done in the future to learn from this situation.

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How do I let my child fail?

There are several steps in this process:

4. Social Media Influence. Seeing friends on social media and not being included in the gathering can lead to distress, disappointment, anger and frustration. Getting more information about the situation can help, but this leads to another life lesson: Sometimes we get left out, sometimes we aren’t liked, and we have to learn to cope with that truth without making the situation worse. Many of these skills are needed for interpersonal relationships.

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How do I let my child fail?

There are several steps in this process:

5. Take a step back and avoid hovering. It can be very tough to watch your child fall down but they can only learn how to handle disappointment through trial and error. When parents come to their child’s rescue, they deprive their children of the very experiences that require problem-solving and set them on the path to resilience and the confidence to take on new challenges. They are also telling their child, through actions, that they don’t believe in their ability to problem solve.

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How do I let my child fail?

There are several steps in this process:

6. Therapy. If a child can’t function because of a fear of failure, therapy may be an option to consider. One method to help children with anxiety is called exposure therapy. The therapist will slowly and systematically expose them to situations that are not perfect. For instance, parents will complain that homework takes forever because a child will repeatedly rip it up and start over. Exposure therapy teaches children that it’s okay to misspell a word and keep going. The therapist may have them write a paragraph and make as many mistakes as they can to get them used to the idea that it’s not a big deal if they make mistakes.

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Learning to fail can be painful.

But children will only succeed if they can acquire the skill to handle whatever life throws their way.

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The Power of “Yet”�Carol Dweck

The Bridge to Yet (Carol Dweck)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J-swZaKN2Ic

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Mindset of a Champion (Carson Byblow)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=px9CzSZsa0Y

Group Activity and Discussion:

Power of “YET”

• Think of one thing you cannot do YET.
• Then, take a moment to think about steps you can take to get closer to achieving it. If you feel comfortable, write the goal and the steps down on piece of paper.

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