Growing Your Brain

My first year of teaching I followed suit of other teachers and made a 100% Club Raffle Jar. When students received 100% on any assessment, they put their names into a jar and were entered in a chance to win some sort of prize. At the time, I thought that I was encouraging students to work hard and persevere. Now I see that I had it completely wrong. I wonder how many of those students actually worked hard and persevered to achieve that 100%? I know there were definitely some, but in many cases students received 100% because they were high performers in certain subjects. Now, this doesn't make these students any less deserving of their pride in their accomplishments, but the raffle was only allowing a small percentage of my class to take pride in their work. What about the student who failed on the first social studies, studied hard, and earned a C on the next? After reading the article The Learning Myth: Why I'll Never Tell My Son He's Smart by Salman Khan last summer, it finally became clear. This article is about children having a growth-mindset and parents and teachers encouraging and celebrating the challenges a child faces, rather than what comes easily to him or her. 

Thus, the idea of the Brain Growing Jar was born. 

During one of our morning meetings, I explained to the students about the growth-mindset. We had a discussion about what it means, why it is important, and how it will look different for each student. We talked about the brain being a muscle and how it will 'grow' when it is challenged. For example, a student that easily earns an A+ on his spelling test might not consider that a 'brain-growing' moment, but celebrates when he was challenged by the multistep word problem in math. 

It was great! The students noticed moments where they persevered through a challenge and were proud to write it down. Even better was each Friday when I drew names from the jar and read the specific challenge. I always asked for permission prior to reading it, but I never had a student say no. They felt comfortable sharing their struggle, knowing they were better because of it.