Blended Learning and Mindset

I try to keep this as an all audience blog, and despite the occasional foul language, I simply could not resist using this clip to demonstrate mindset.  I mean talk about resiliency, grit, and the celebration of failure!  The coconut horse bit never gets old also.

I have been working for almost 5 years of teaching to change the mindset of students.  I have redesigned the structure of my course and assessment to undo the permanent nature of failure that exist for so many students.  That is to say...If a student fails a quiz, and aces the portion of a test on the same topic...why do we keep the quiz?  The quiz is not accurate anymore, the quiz is artificially weighing down the ability of the grade to communicate level of learning, and worst of all it is telling the student that failure is permanent and inescapable.

Which brings me to mindset

mindset  

Web definitions mentality: a habitual or characteristic mental attitude that determines how you will interpret and respond to situations.

Quick summary of Deweck's ideas on mindset (she wrote a whole book on it so forgive me for all the stuff left out in these descriptions)

Closed mindset people see their abilities as fixed and are resilient to learning anything that does not come naturally or fits within their self image.  "I am good at math so I try, writing however I am terrible at...".  
Open mindset people see their abilities as dynamic and invite challenges as a chance to expand their ability, not question them.  

I want to build open mindset students and I am lucky, none of my students have ever taken physics and don't know that they are bad at it (a challenge HS Algebra I teachers face daily).  In addition to a grade that is 90% reliant on what they know or can do (test) and 10% everything else (HW, participation, labs, etc) and the regular opportunity to review and reassess old content, I added the following.

The initial delivery of material was done electronically and by student choice.  They were given objectives during the week and self paced through them.  I wanted students to have some voice and choice in the direction they took to mastery.  This infusion of technology + daily mindset coaching on how much I believe in their ability to learn Physics delivered the following.

11 students enrolled in AP physics (their senior year!...the average from P physics to AP physics is 1 student and the class is so hard (even by AP standards) that two years from now it will become a two year course!

10 of the 11 have never taken an AP science course before!

9 of the 11 have never taken any AP class before!

8 of the 11 are re-designated language learners,

and my personal favorite

5 of the 11 were failing the course at the first progress report...it's my favorite because I want to teach that failure is just a part of the process so long as you keep trying.

I am more proud of these statistics than anything else I have done as a teaching professional because they represent a change in student's mindsets.    The best part is...this is just the beginning, I didn't even know what I was doing and spent much of the time learning how not to run a blended learning classroom.   This is just the beginning.

Cheers!