On Chess, Reading, Writing, and the Growth Mindset

Hi Everyone,

Looking for ways to spend more time with my 16-year-old son, I agreed to play in our local chess club with him. He is an emerging player with promise. I am a total noob, an inexperienced beginner. I thought I would go with him long enough to ensure the club was a good environment for him. If I didn’t like it, I would drop him off and do something else.

The first few months were, in a word, painful. I lost every game, sometimes embarrassingly so. My head hurt from the focused concentration. I consoled myself with thoughts of quitting. I pondered excuses that allowed me to leave the club and save face. My enthusiasm for chess gradually waned.

Then I remembered, “Aren’t you the guy who says to never give up? Don't you encourage students to develop a growth mindset and do the hard things? Where are these high-minded ideals now that you have to live them out in your own life?”

How does this relate to our adult education students? Many come to class with the baggage of failed educational experiences. We ask them to read and write during class, things they struggle with mightily. Our students see little progress as they slog through readings and make desperate attempts to build sentences and paragraphs. They are tempted to quit every class, to do something else, and to save face. It takes courage for them to come back week after week.

  • What do you do to encourage your students to persist week after week and tackle the reading and writing that they struggle with doing?

After two months of play, I finally won my first chess game at the club! I was so excited, and I did a celebratory scream in the parking lot! Chess has been a great bonding activity with my son.

Thanks for your thoughts,

Steve Schmidt, Moderator

LINCS Reading and Writing Group

 

Comments

Hi Steve! My 16 year old son can wipe the floor with me at chess, so I sympathize!

When my students face challenges with class material and express the desire to give up, I sometimes remind them that feelings change - tomorrow they will likely feel more hopeful and ready to tackle it again, after resting their brain and getting some sleep. The other technique I use is to let students encourage each other. When someone expresses frustration or the desire to quit, if I wait a beat, many times another student (many times an older, more mature student) will jump in to begin encouraging them. Sometimes it turns into a mini tutoring session where the older student says, "I struggled with this too, but I figured it out by doing it this way, etc." Many times the most convincing and encouraging voices are those of the fellow students who have been there and come out the other side! 

Thanks for these great ideas Anita!

I still love Carol Dweck's TED talk on the Power of Yet. There are many things our students have not mastered, yet. I love her idea on transforming grading structure from letter grades to yet/not yet. We can achieve at higher levels than we think possible based on the power of yet. Our behavior follows our beliefs. 

I'm wondering how community members have used this video in their classes or what other ways they have employed growth mindset thinking . . . 

Thanks for your thoughts,

Steve Schmidt, Moderator

LINCS Reading and Writing Group