“Learning Mindsets Explained” Short Documentary


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The high school system in the United States was really built at a time, over a hundred years ago where less than 5% of kids actually went to high school, graduated from high school. And so it's designed to kinda weed out the folks who aren't able to catch something really quickly and move on to the next thing.


The system is not very user friendly. Schools are not user friendly. Very institutionalized. It's around treatments rather than preventions.


We still have this system that we're gonna teach it to you once. You either got it or don't, then we're moving on to the next thing. And it's not matched up at all with how kids learn or what we know about motivation to learn, or even brain science, how people learn.


They're designed in a way where the student has to fit the school. Our goal is to have the school fit the student.


I really believe that kids need choice, and they need quality schools that fit their interests and their needs.


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There are four what we call academic mindsets. I belong to this academic community or this learning community. My ability and confidence grow with my effort, what Carol and other people call a growth mindset. This work has value to me, so the idea of relevance, and I can succeed at this. There's just clear research evidence that kids who endorse these beliefs are more perseverant. They engage in the academic behaviors that are important for learning and they end up performing better academically as a result.


I personally think that that is the most important thing we can do. Because the world is changing really, really quickly and the pace of change is continuing to increase. If we prepare them as effective learners, then that's going to empower them and help them thrive throughout their lives, even more than teaching them critical thinking skills, and collaboration skills, and creativity.


So the idea of I belong to this academic community means that you can be yourself and you're acknowledge for who you are and what you bring to that space.


Many of our students have questions about whether they belong. And so by building trust and a supportive community and a cohort, we can change that belief. If you change this belief, such that you feel like you belong, you'll put more effort into the class and you'll get better grades.


The idea of growth mindset. My ability and my competence will grow with my effort. Your intelligence is flexible. It's like a muscle that grows with use. And if you actually put more time and energy, and effort into it, and kind of struggle with it, you actually will get better at it.


As it makes them realize that it's through their own effort and their work, and the questions that they ask that they'll improve.


The strategy we have now is to teach a content, not to pay attention to who the child is.


The idea of self efficacy, or I can succeed at this, if you make the kind of split second judgement that, I don't know how to do this and I don't believe I can, then that's kind of the end of it for you. You choose, I'm not gonna put my energy and investment in something that I don't think I can be successful in.


That it's not, again kinda of a magical thing that they're born with or that involves some super high IQ. It's actually something that's under their own control and under their own steam. And that actually makes a huge difference if you believe that.


And then the fourth of the academic mindsets is the idea of relevance where this work has value to me.


That it's about resilience it's around students being able to see the importance of what is it that they're doing or what it is that they're learning.


We often times engage kids in schools in work that has value to know one beyond the utility value of the teachers asked me to do this and I have to do it to get the grade.


Or else, we keep on doing the same things we're doing. We're 40, 50, 60% of students are disengaged from school because they can't find the connections.


This is your chance to be the person you wanna be. This is your chance to come into a school and create your own identity. What that also means in terms of implication, is what does a classroom look like to get to those outcomes?


How do we create schools where those things are true?


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