The Amazing Power of YET

The Amazing Power of YET
Posted on 01/17/2019

Schools with a supportive community, a great team of professional educators, and children eager to learn can create an environment where everyone achieves. Students, parents, teachers, and community members that spend time in our schools have the opportunity to enjoy some impressive and real eye-opening learning experiences. Exposure to new technologies, creative ideas, and diverse perspectives makes the School District of the Menomonie Area an amazing place for the students, staff, and stakeholders who choose to be involved.

While much important instruction in the SDMA is still focused on traditional academic areas like math, reading, science, and social studies, educating the “whole child” continues to be a major emphasis in our schools. In recent years, programming beyond the traditional core instructional areas has been expanded in Menomonie, and lessons about physical, social, and emotional health are taught at every level across the school district. Some teachers in the SDMA have even found success modeling an approach to learning with their students that promotes a positive growth mindset through the Power of Yet.

According to mindsetworks.com, Stanford professor Dr. Carol Dweck and her colleagues spent years studying student attitudes about failure and noticed that attitudes about learning really do matter. Students with a growth mindset- who believed they can grow their brain and get smarter- reached higher achievement levels than students who believed that intelligence is more of a fixed entity. Also, in addition to the differences in achievement levels, students with a fixed mindset demonstrated more frustration by even the smallest setbacks.

So how can we promote a growth mindset within our schools and across our community? It’s all about the Power of Yet. Studies have shown that attitudes about learning can change. In a study of problem solving ability, students who were given praise for effort significantly outperformed students who were only praised for their intelligence level. Consequently, it is not helpful to refer only to a child’s intelligence level rather than recognizing his or her effort. Eliminating stereotypes that lead toward a fixed mindset is critical to the advancement of learning in our community.

Instead of focusing on what a particular person, gender, or group of a specific ethnicity or socioeconomic status supposedly can or cannot do, it is more important to focus on what can be accomplished in the future. Simply referring to some children as being good or bad spellers is not helpful, and a child should not be labeled to be “bad at math” just because he or she cannot solve a set of complex math problems. We need to talk to our children with more of a growth mindset, while acknowledging that he or she might not be able to complete certain tasks YET.

Our children and people in our community can learn anything! Research suggests that this type of growth mindset translates to personal traits and behaviors as well. While learning can be difficult and may require a lot of time, energy, and effort, the fixed mindset that classifies certain people as limited in their ability to learn has been debunked.

As a community that values education and the future for our children, we need to view learning on a continuum and focus ourselves on a growth mindset. We have made great progress in the School District of the Menomonie Area, but we are not there YET.

Should school stakeholders have any questions about growth mindset or anything else regarding our school district, I invite you to visit the ASC or contact me at 715-232-1642.  More information about our schools can be found on the school district website (www.sdmaonline.com) and on Twitter (www.twitter.com/sdmaonline).

*Thank you to Wakanda 5th grade teacher Anne Hasse for teaching me more about the Power of Yet.