Stanford Challange

This was a very brain teasing podcast. I never really thought about inteligence much, especially my own. I'm a natural blond so therefore people tend to assume that I am a ditzy airhead, but I know I'm not and that was alwaysthe end of it. But children, however, tink of things differently. Either they believe that they have only a certain amount of intelligence and will never have any more, or they believe that they can "get smarter." Some children are so afraid to do things because they wonder if they will look smart or look stupid. Stanford did a study in which they have an eight session workshop in which half of the children are given study skills classes and are taught the Growth Mindset. The other half is nly taught study skills.
The first half learned that their brains are like muscles, and that with exercise (learnig), they will grow and become more intelligent. They did better in their classes and were more motivated. The second group was not motivated and their grades did not rise, and some children's grades even dropped as a result. Even though the teachers were not told about the difference in the two groups, they were able to sense it. After reading Carol Dweck's book, a driving coach remarked that he noticed a connection between Growth Mindset and optimal drivers. The difference between a winning driver and a losing driver is what they did with the mistakes they made. A winning driver looked back, reflected and adapted to do better, a losing driver tried to forget the mistakes instead of learning form them.
As a future teacher, I must always remember that some students have a growth mindset and others have a fixed mindset. I will strive to teach all of my students that it is okay to make mistakes as long as you learn from them, and that there is no such thing as a stupid question. It is better to look a little foolish infront of one's peers by asking a question, than to look foolish on a test because you did not want to ask for help on a subject matter. I will always remember something Mrs. Burt from Satsuma High School told me, "A foolish man ignores his mistakes, a smart man learns from his own, but a WISE man learns from the mistakes of others in addition to his own."