version of this content, but in place of the detailed research content on why these strategies are effective, the handbook adds in a host of reproducible tools for nearly every strategy that you can use to support and shape your evolving mindsets.
To change students’ lives, you will have to change before any worthwhile change shows up in your students. I’m not telling you the path of change is easy; I’m telling you that it can be done, and you can do it.
This book’s major theme is developing the most powerful tool for change: mindset. A mindset is a way of thinking about something. As Stanford University psychologist Carol Dweck (2008) explains, people (broadly) think about intelligence in two ways: (1) either you have it or you don’t (the fixed mindset), or (2) you can grow and change (the growth mindset). In the areas of intelligence and competency, you may have more of a fixed mindset (stuck in place) or a growth mindset (capable of changing). Those with a fixed mindset believe intelligence and competency are a rigid unchangeable quality. Those with a growth mindset believe that intelligence and competency can develop over time as the brain changes and grows.
This book broadens and deepens the mindset theme to many new areas of student and teacher behaviors that you’ll find highly relevant. It continues in seven parts, each highlighting a specific mindset, its supporting research, and some easy-to-implement and highly effective strategies you can use immediately. Here are the seven parts.
• Part one: The relational mindset—Chapters 1 through 3 explore the relational mindset and begin to discover why the types of relationships teachers have (or don’t have) with students are one of the biggest reasons why students graduate or drop out. Everything you do starts with building relationships with your students.
• Part two: The achievement mindset—Chapters 4 through 6 teach you about powerful success builders with the achievement mindset. Students from poverty can and do love to learn, when you give them the right tools.
• Part three: The positivity mindset—Chapters 7 through 9 home in on your students’ emotions and attitudes. Each chapter focuses on building an attitude of academic hope and optimism in both your students and yourself. If you’ve ever put a mental limitation on any student (don’t worry, we all have), these chapters are must-reads. Your new, rock-solid positivity mindset will help your students soar.
• Part four: The rich classroom climate mindset—Chapters 10 through 12 offer strategies to take all that positivity you’ve generated and use it to create an energetic, high-performing class culture, using the rich classroom climate mindset. You’ll learn the secrets that high-performing teachers use to build an amazing classroom climate.
• Part five: The enrichment mindset—Chapters 13 through 15 focus on building breakthrough cognitive capacity in students. A big problem for students from poverty is their mental bandwidth, often known as cognitive load. Here, you’ll see the clear, scientific evidence that shows, without a molecule of doubt, that you can ensure your students build cognitive capacity in the form of memory, thinking skills, vocabulary, and study skills.
• Part six: The engagement mindset—Chapters 16 through 18 dig into student involvement in a new way with the engagement mindset. You’ll gain quick, easy, and practical strategies for maintenance and stress, for buy-in, and to build community.
• Part seven: The graduation mindset—Chapters 19 and 20 help you focus on the gold medal in teaching: students who graduate job or college ready. Each chapter centers on school factors absolutely proven to support graduation. You’ll learn the science of why these factors can be such powerful achievement boosters, and you’ll discover a wide range of positive alternatives to what your students are doing at school.
Each part ends with a Follow Through section that asks you to consider your personal narrative in light of what you’ve read about the featured mindset and reflect on how you can use the mindset to improve your teaching practices. There’s much more for you to learn, but these seven mindsets and the accompanying strategies will make a world of difference if you implement them well. That’s my promise.
This book ends with an epilogue that offers a quick-read summary of the book and offers organization tools for immediate application. On this book’s website (visit go.SolutionTree.com/instruction) you’ll be able to access three appendices with useful resources to support your implementation of the book’s tools, some tips on the important process of running your own brain, and a guide to rich lesson planning.
This powerful book is packed with real science and real teachers using powerful strategies, and it absolutely will support you in making fresh, smart choices in teaching. As you read it, it will be up to you to pause and reflect often. Any single chapter can make a difference in your work. Ask yourself not, “Have I heard of this before?” but instead, “Do I already do this as a daily practice?” and “Do I do this well enough to get the results I want or need?” The fact is that all of us can get better. This book can take you down that path.
Before we get into part one and all seven mindsets for change, let’s briefly look just a little deeper at the research that supports them and why you can believe in them.
About the New Normal
Books for educators typically just tell teachers what to do. This one is different because I explain why the suggestions in this book are relevant, important, and most of all, urgent. If you grew up in the United States, I know first-hand how many changes you’ve seen in your lifetime. If you live in another country, no doubt you have seen disruptive change as well. Many of the changes you must learn to regard as the new normal. We typically say something is normal meaning it’s just fine and pay less attention because we often take it for granted. We also say things are normal as if that is a good thing. But now I invite you to see the new normal as a threat to your job and your future. Poverty and mindsets (the topics of this book) play a big part in this new normal. This is no doomsday scenario. It is about what has already happened. You must understand this before you walk into your classroom again.
At one school I was working with, a teacher shared some pretty serious frustrations. As she spoke, her eyes moistened, “You want us to do this and that, plus you say it might be hard—and it might even take months or years! For starters, do you even know how much we are being asked to do these days? Do you know how little support we get from leadership? How do we even know these things you suggest are possible? And, really, why should we even bother? After all, things will change again in a few years, and there’ll be some new flavor of the month that we all have to jump on board with again!” She was nearly in tears, and her pain was obvious. When teachers tell me, “Our jobs have changed,” they’re right. When teachers tell me, “Students aren’t like they used to be,” they’re right. When staff tell me, “The whole profession
