How do scaffolds lead to intellectual satisfaction? - Conversation with Andy
Best Resources:
- Carol Dweck's work....MindSet Online...
- Middle Web blog on growth mindset with a lot of great links.
- Greater Good - The Science of a Meaningful Life - website - This link is to an article about reducing the fear of failure.
- Learning is Messy: http://www.edutopia.org/blog/embracing-messy-learning-joshua-block
- http://numberwarrior.wordpress.com/2009/01/19/hint-tokens-getting-students-to-struggle
Bullseye = Effort:
- Outer ring - freak out!
- Middle ring - perfect - cognitive dissonance, stretch, learning
- Bullseye - safe
Use norms and strategies to help students move to the middle ring. You don't want to be freaking out and you don't want to be safe. What are some strategies for movement? (Both teachers and students)
Websites on Motivation and Effort:
- At risk students (NCREL study)
- Cultivating Cultures of Curiosity! - great video!!!
I decided long ago to achieve as an act of defiance — to define my own destiny and refuse to have it defined for me. I fully understand that trying hard doesn’t always guarantee success. Success is often a fluky thing, dependent as much on luck and favor as on hard work. But while hard work may not guarantee success, not working hard almost always guarantees failure.
I frame the argument to myself this way: If you know that you are under assault, recognize it, and defend yourself.
Trying hard and working hard is its own reward. It feeds the soul. It affirms your will and your power. And it radiates from you, lighting the way for all those who see you.
...For some folks, life is a hill. You can either climb or stay at the bottom.
It’s not fair. It’s not right. But it is so. Some folks are born halfway up the hill and others on the top. The rest of us are not. Life doles out favors in differing measures, often as a result of historical injustice and systematic bias. That’s a hurtful fact, one that must be changed. We should all work toward that change.
In the meantime, until that change is real, what to do if life gives you the hill?
You can curse it. You can work hard to erode it. You can try to find a way around it. Those are all understandable endeavors. Staying at the bottom is not.
You may be born at the bottom, but the bottom was not born in you. You have it within you to be better than you were, to make more of your life than was given to you by life.
This is not to say that we can always correct life’s inequities, but simply that we honor ourselves in the trying.
History is cluttered with instances of the downtrodden lifting themselves up. The spirit and endurance that it requires is not a historical artifact but a living thing that abides in each of us, part of the bloodline, written in the tracks of tears and the sweat of toil.
If life for you is a hill, be a world-class climber.
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