“Failure isn’t Final”: Education Roundtable Series on Growth Mindset

by Alessandra Simeone

Yesterday, Row New York welcomed Young Executives Board (YEB) Member Bailey Griswold to our Education Roundtable Series. Bailey, an Earth Science teacher at the Kurt Hahn Expeditionary Learning School in Brooklyn, discussed how to teach a growth mindset for students and presented our staff with the question, “Can you grow your intelligence?”

Bailey began the discussion with an ice breaker, asking staff to share failures that led to success and noting that “failure isn’t final; you need to struggle in order to learn.” A key component of a growth mindset, she explained, is to embrace challenges; through tenacity, effort, and even failure, you can achieve your goals.

Following this discussion, Bailey presented a challenge to the group. In this “grapple”, students (and in this case, staff) were given a difficult word problem/task with minimal instruction. Staff struggled with the logic problem (“This is SO hard!” was frequently heard around the room) and essentially experienced what students feel as they struggle to find the answers and “not look dumb” amidst their peers. As educators, Bailey told the group, it’s important to teach students to tackle obstacles (whether school, rowing, or life) and the processes of working through them for learning and growth, which will then help them to face challenges ahead.

In addition, the group talked about the differences between a fixed and growth mindset, and strengthening the brain to grow intelligence.  They wrote and shared letters to a struggling student, and discussed learning targets that provide achievable benchmarks for our students.

Thank you, Bailey, for providing our staff with even more ways to empower (and challenge!) our student-athletes!

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