Failure is not optional

Posted on March 16, 2011 by Kelly O'Shea

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It’s time for the mindset talk in my physics classes. I’ve been trying to prime them for a while now. Honors Physics read part of Carol Dweck’s book as part of their summer homework and two chapters of The Talent Code during the year. The “regular” physics class has been talking about myelin and how feeling confused means you’re about to learn something. On the course evaluation in January, 36% of them agreed with “You can learn new things, but you can’t really change how intelligent you are.” while 38% agreed with “You can always substantially change how intelligent you are.” (it wasn’t either/or).

I’ve decided that the regular class is going to read a short part of Bounce aloud and discuss it on Monday. Honors Physics is going to read an abridged version of How Not to Talk to Your Kids (the parts about very young children are cut out) for homework and talk about it in class. We read it in Honors last year at this time, and it had a profound effect on many of my students. They start to recognize themselves as they read the article, and some start to recognize what has happened to them this year in physics. At this point in the year, almost all of them will have “hit the wall” in this class. They will have encountered something difficult enough that they couldn’t immediately understand how to do it. For the students who have always found easy success in math and science, they initially believe this means they’ve reached the end of their “potential” and are no longer as smart as they’d always known they were. Sure, they’ve earned A’s on every math test they’ve ever taken, even as they’ve watched their friends struggle, but 10th grade science is as far as they are going to get on their academic journey. This is the end of the road.