“Measurement & Assessment For Learning Mindsets” Short Documentary


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A growth mindset is the understanding of abilities and intelligence as malleable, as things that we grow over time and develop, rather than things that are fixed. And understanding that we develop from our experiences, our life experiences, where we interact with other people, with our parents, with our teachers, with our peers. A strategy to foster a growth mindset is to talk about what people do, their behavior, their choices, their strategies, rather than whether they're smart or not, or naturally talented or not, which can be perceived as something that they don't have control over. The most powerful way to do this is to really foster a growth mindset ourselves and to be lifelong learners ourselves.


Children who are three years old are already identifying interests in who they want to learn from. We're biologically driven to do that.


It's about establishing a quality relationship. We definitely utilize a growth model, in terms of looking towards where students come in when they first join in our school, and then what their plan is after school. We look at each individual student, his or her strengths, their challenges, their interests, and then you build their educational experience around who they are, involving families as much as possible. And also involving the real world, so our students are out at internships anywhere from one to two days a week.


They reflect on their leadership skills. How they've collaborated, how they've persisted, how they communicated, etc, and then they also reflect on the particular project and what they've learned.


One of the most powerful forms of assessment is self assessment.


Young people are told how they did, not asked how they did and if you ask them, they'll tell you. When is that asked in school?


The growth mindset is one of the academic mindsets. Another powerful one is, I belong to a learning community.


If there's a commitment to it, it needs to be modeled by school leaders, whether they're instructional leaders, school leaders, district leaders. So it's not just about giving them materials but really modelling them and having them experience it.


Yes, I have a community that believes in me, not just a teacher that believes in me, more. Our mantra is one student at a time, starting off with their interests and building their academic experience through those interests.


To actually give them real choices about the things that they wanna learn and how they wanna learn them. Ask the question, what do you like to do? What do you wanna get better at? How are you gonna get better at it? How are you gonna measure that?


Something that a lot of project based learning schools as an example of how to do that. They teach math in a way that's applicable and relevant to things that students care about, so that as they're learning math, they're also thinking oh, I can see how this is going to be helpful to me or I can see how this is interesting.


Once you have that relevance and you have that relationship, then you're able to really push the rigor but it's gotta start with the student and their interests.


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Finally, the fourth economic mindset is I can succeed, or self efficacy. I see myself as being able to meet my goals, those goals might be challenging but I can see that it is possible, if I feel like I have resources, that I need access to resources, I can see a way to continue to improve myself so that I can meet my goals.


Our whole program is built on our college success portfolio. It basically says that to graduate, you don't just graduate from your classes and pass the exit exam, you have to defend that you're ready to graduate and go to college. You also have to demonstrate that you have 21st century leadership skills, so in the four years, all they do is reflect, revise, reflect, revise, reflect, revise. It's really interesting because one of our guests that came to visit asked the students, how do you deal with failure? And her answer was, we don't use that word here. We re-submit.


You have to pay attention to everything all at once. It's not siloed, it's all entwined. It's all threaded together.


Whenever you can, include student voice as much as possible. Student voice, student choice in the classroom, hands-on activities, projects as much as possible. Make it real, make it relevant to young people, make it current. Our approach allows students to have more ownership for their learning.


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