Trail Ridge Middle School, CO – Case Study

“Brainology teaches kids to take ownership of their learning experience by being the one doing the work… it teaches them that doing work is a really positive thing because it’s going to help them to become smarter."

Background

Marnie Steele is a 7th grade science teacher at Trail Ridge Middle School in Longmont, Colorado. The student demographic consists of 42.7% free and reduced lunch and 42.7% Hispanic, and there are a significant number of ELL students.

Challenge

Marnie has found that many of her kids would get into a habit of always failing: they became used to doing poorly and didn’t think they would ever get better. After reading the book Mindset by Carol Dweck, Marnie wanted to incorporate the Growth Mindset into her classroom, specifically to teach her ELL students about the learning process. She was specifically interested in seeing whether it would help the ELL students to understand that by investing effort, they would become smarter and perform better in school.

This month we had some terrific entries, so we decided to honor the entries of four educators! The Growth Minded Educators of September are: Marina Gijzen, John Burk, Lakisha Covert, and Leanna Picard. Congratulations to our winners, and thank you to all who participated! We received many fantastic submissions, and will reach out to some of you to discuss potential methods of incorporating your ideas and experiences into other areas of the Growth Mindset community.

Below are the winning entries to the contest question, "What techniques are you planning to use to increase student motivation during the next school year?”

The American Psychological Association is honoring Carol Dweck with the 2011 APA Distinguished Scientific Contribution Award.

The American Psychological Association is honoring Carol Dweck with the 2011 APA Distinguished Scientific Contribution Award. "For her insightful research and incisive theorizing concerning perceptions and interpretations of success and failure across many domains of human endeavor, but especially in the realm of academic achievement." The citation goes on to praise her innovative and elegant experimental paradigms, her wide theoretical net, and her clever and effective strategies for promoting students' motivation.

The APA Citation:

"For her insightful research and incisive theorizing concerning perceptions and interpretations of success and failure across many domains of human endeavor, but especially in the realm of academic achievement. Drawing on a series of innovative and elegant experimental paradigms, Carol S. Dweck has cast a theoretical net progressing from initial studies of learned helplessness to studies of the larger self-theories of ability, the activity goals individuals select, and the differential consequences associated with helpless versus mastery-oriented responses to difficult problems. Her widely cited work has produced, in addition, clever and effective strategies for promoting more functional incremental theories, learning goals, and persistence in students facing apparent failure".

Congratulations Carol!