In my years as an educator and student I have recognized some simple truths about learning. In my previous post, I outlined reasons why change is needed in both education and society in general. This post will focus on my ideas about the learning process which is currently not addressed directly with many students. It is something that is just expected to happen. With psychological and brain research available, I believe it is time to demystify this process by breaking it down into understandable parts that can help all stakeholders move forward when there is a problem.
I use a universal gardening metaphor because parents and teachers are basically tasked with helping children grow their minds. Each part of the process is important for the overall goal of growth. This is a brief summary of the ideas. I go into further detail in my upcoming book How to Grow a Mind: A Better Way to Grow and Innovate in the 21st Century. This is part of the edu-social movement designed to evolve the educational system.
Your Mind Is a Garden Overview:
It begins by incorporating mindset research as a foundation (fertile ground) and the belief that we can always improve. Secondly, it focuses on expectations, goals, and dreams (the intended seeds). Then, attention and interaction are needed to create engagement (the planting process). We can guide our choices about what is actually planted. Thirdly, to “keep it growing” three components are needed for navigating life. The right balance of effort, creativity, and motivation, also known as the doing, perspective, and desire within a given situation. These facets can help us to understand and solve problems within the learning process. By using these categories, we can better understand where to focus our mental energies to move forward. We can also turn setbacks or “failures” into learning opportunities to be valued and emphasized as helpful for growth and change (failures into fertilizer and new seeds of success). Lastly, I discuss the need for “weeding out” fear, doubt, excuses and judgments that can be detrimental to progress. Each step will be discussed below.
Step 1: Fertile Ground: A Mindset for Growth
The importance of being mentally ready to learn is like the importance of fertile soil when growing a plant. This is why a growth mindset is necessary for real learning. Carol Dweck’s research confirms the benefits of a growth mindset. Simply, we need to believe that abilities can grow and that possibilities for improvement exist. Teachers, parents, coaches and mentors have an important role in making the mind fertile ground for learning. Some educational settings are directly addressing the idea of mindsets with students but many are not! This is something that all teachers, parents, and students need to understand and have a language to address problems in this area. It is very difficult to grow a healthy garden if you are planting seeds on a parking lot. It is not ability that determines learning. It is the perception of ability that really matters! The ideas of labels, special programs, and social stigmas go along with this section. I argue we don’t need to get rid of labels and terms like “smart” but we do need to purposefully redefine these within the context of a grwoth mindset for students. Here is a quick visual to understand the difference between fixed and growth mindsets by @ViSalus. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o8JycfeoVzg
Step 2: Planting Seeds: Attention + Interaction= Engagement
In this section we learn about what seeds we are really planting and how it is tied to what we are paying attention to and interacting with. Are you or your students paying more attention to what you don’t want than what you do want? Usually what we don’t want is loud and in our face. This section offers simple strategies that use attention and interaction to focus on what you do want rather than remaining angry and frustrated with what you don’t want.
In terms of goal setting and progress, planting the right seeds has everything to do with having a healthy garden. It also incorporates motivation when it asks who is really doing the planting. Remember when we are talking about a mind, as teachers, parents, colleagues or friends, we can only suggest what seeds to plant in another’s mind. What they are actually choosing to plant is up to them. I argue that attention and interaction are necessary for learning to occur. Teachers and students should be aware of attention and its importance in the learning process. This is especially important for students that struggle with attention. I believe teachers and students can adjust learning opportunities to include more interaction when attention is a challenge. This would also be the case for very young learners.
Step 3: Keep it Growing: Turning failures into fertilizer and new seeds for success
Some of the most successful people in history have used failure as fuel to achieve their dreams. This section asks you to redefine failure and success into usable forms. Just as every seed planted in our mind doesn’t turn out the way we expect, the ones that don’t go as planned have as much, if not more, to teach us as the ones that bloom beautifully. If we value failure, setbacks, and challenges rather than hiding or excusing them away, we can refocus and remain on course. Eventual success should be understood as the result of hard work and constructive feedback. Successes are also vitamins for the mind because it helps you see what worked well and where you are headed next. Our gardening metaphor helps us illustrate this concept. What doesn’t survive becomes fertilizer for what is still growing, what does bloom, creates new seeds for success.
Also in this section, plants need things to keep growing and so does the mind. It needs the right balance of effort (doing), creativity (perception), and motivation (desire). Understanding that these three things are very different but interrelated and interdependent is important for addressing challenges in the learning process. This is especially helpful for lesson design. One facet can be adjusted and a domino effect can occur toward increased learning. As children become older, understanding this will help them to become better problem solvers as they navigate more complex situations.
Part 4: Regular Weeding: Fear, excuses, judgment, doubt…weed them out!
The mind only has so much attention. If we spend a majority of it on fear, excuses, judgment and doubt, there isn’t much left for learning and actual problem solving. This is easier said than done, but in this section we focus on our ability to make choices and catch ourselves when we get sucked into one of these useless mind grabbers. As parents, coaches, mentors, and friends, we can be the gentle reminder to refocus and “weed out” thoughts that aren’t helping our mind do its job. The goal of course, is to help those we are helping do this on their own but they need to learn that this is a choice and then to become experts at weeding.
This has been a very brief overview of the 4 essential steps to using the mind effectively. Future blog posts will dig more deeply into each component. The need to integrate an understanding of the learning process into every classroom is largely based on need for awareness and language to discuss and address challenges.
My next blog post will highlight the 5 ways to maintain a balanced “mental diet” in the 21st century. It is delivered through a nutritional metaphor and the acronym “M.A.I.N -E” dish which corresponds almost directly with the four steps above but targets the daily individual process of using the mind.
If you are interested in my work or the Edu-Social movement How to Grow a Mind, please follow me on twitter @JillReid123. I am interested to hear your thoughts on these ideas.
howtogrowaminddotcom 
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