But I am not a lion!

In both role as a dad and a teacher I can see the importance of developing growth mindset principles. I have posted other articles about strategies which I have used in the classroom but as yet I have not shared any experiences from my role as dad.

My eldest son is 7 and is currently in year 2. We have spoken about learning new things from the point of view of practice, failing and hard work. He has learnt to swim, read, ride his bike and has recently started to learn karate. We have used these as opportunities to talk about practice and making mistakes. We have watch the video below and discussed how we learn. This may sound like I am being a ‘tiger’ dad but I see helping children to develop resilience and a positive attitude towards their learning as crucial and as something that needs to start when they are young.

How we learn

My son has given me some great responses, following our discussions, and some of the tweets from the @growthmindset1 account are his words. For example he once said to me ‘If I try something and it does not work, I will keep trying different things until I get it right.’ These moments gave me hope that we were building his resilience and understanding of how we learn new things.

This weekend my son had some homework to complete. One activity was linked to identifying adjectives in sentences. He approached this with enthusiasm. The shock came when I lifted the second homework sheet out of his back.

The second sheet contained activities linked to telling the time. There were a number of clocks and the activity required him to write the time shown on each clock. As soon as he saw the sheet he dropped his pencil and said ‘I can’t do that sheet, only the lions can do that sheet!’ I had clearly missed some communication from school or possibly from the Kenyan Government on the introduction of times pieces to their prides. I was confused. He then continued, ‘You have to be smart to do that sheet, the lions are smart. I am in a group below them and not as smart.’

After further questions I learnt the following. The class is split into groups and the lions are the top maths group. This sheet was one of their activities which had been given to him to try. The fact he did not want to try was really interesting. He believed only ‘smart’ people could do these questions. There was no point in trying as he was not in the ‘smart’ group.

I do not believe that the school has labelled pupils as ‘smart’, rather I think that the pupils have identified a kind of pecking order. I will ask the school about this just to confirm my thinking. Either way the impact on my son is interesting.

I spoke with my son about hard work and trying things. ‘If we make a mistake we can learn from it and fix it,’ I said. After a short chat he was ready to give it a go. He managed, with some pointers, to complete the sheet. At the end he was both shocked and proud that he had completed the sheet. My final question to him was, ‘So, can you be a lion?’ He replied with a smile, ‘Yes, if you try, and work hard.’

This made me reflect on how our words and actions as parents, teachers and coaches impact on children. Our words and actions can create enthusiasm and self belief or they can create pupils who do not want to challenge themselves for either fear of failure or the belief that they are not smart enough to try.