Reading, language arts, and math are the focus in lower and upper elementary grades. This doesn’t mean history and science are not taught but are not considered core subject matter. State and national assessments focus on the three core subjects. Science starts being assessed in fifth grade and then again every two years. Schools put a lot of emphasis on these assessments and determine a student’s academic progress and success on the scores that they earn. Anyone teaching for a while will tell you that these assessments are an absolute farce and don’t tell you anything about a student’s academic success. These tests are good for only one reason, to waste valuable classroom teaching and learning time. Academic success is not found in an end-of-the-year assessment or any assessment for that matter. Academic success is determined by the same qualities that define success in anything – Mindset!
Teachers are told to teach the curriculum, assess students’ progress, create interventions, focus on core academics, and more. A teacher is not told to focus on mindset and building good mental habits that will lead to academic success. Students are given worksheet after worksheet, assessment after assessment, and are never given real-world connections between what they are doing and why it’s essential. Mindset is not something that is encouraged in the classroom. Sure, there might be a “Growth Mindset” poster in the room, but how often is it referred to? How often is it taught? The focus is on academics rather than the key to academic success.
I believe academics are essential. However, academics are not a priority to students. They are a priority to parents, teachers, schools, and state officials. We should be asking, “How do we get students to prioritize academics?”. When we consider everything, students come from all life backgrounds. We have students who come from strong families, students who come from struggling families, and students who don’t have any family at all. A child’s circumstances strongly determine the priority level of academics. Even though a school cannot control what happens to a child outside of education, it can create an environment that pushes for academic excellence and success.
Pushing curriculum, content-focused interventions, worksheets, assessments, and so on does not create an environment that drives academic excellence and success. It starts with the right mindset. Consider this analogy. There is a reason the gym is empty, and few people attend. Being physically healthy takes resilience, grit, passion, hard work, dedication, time, and discipline. People quit the gym because they lack these essential characteristics. These same characteristics are needed to be academically successful. However, instead of teaching and encouraging these characteristics, we focus on the curriculum, the assignments, the content, and the assessments. That’s like someone getting a personal trainer at the gym who shows them how to use the equipment, tests them on their knowledge of the equipment, lets them struggle through their health journey, and never once checks in, builds a map to getting physically fit, pushes them to do one more rep, or gives them expectations to meet their goal and holds them to it.
If we are not teaching the mindset in the classroom, students’ academics will struggle; especially for the students who come from a home where academics is not a priority. I teach multiple concepts in my classroom and reference them throughout the year. Below are just a few of the ways I focus on mindset:
- Discipline Equals Freedom
There is a book I love and have read more than once: Extreme Ownership by Jocko Willink and Leif Babin. The book goes through the value and importance of owning everything we do. Twelve essential lessons are taught throughout the book, but I will only focus on those that make sense in the classroom. 1) Extreme Ownership; 2) Check Your Ego; 3) Prioritize and Execute; and 4) Discipline Equals Freedom. Each of these principles is a mindset that supports academic success. These principles are discussed, reviewed, and are expected in the classroom. When students fail to meet these expectations, we refocus by having classroom discussions or one-on-one discussions. Most of these concepts are new to students in my classroom, so I spend a reasonable amount of time discussing them at the beginning of the year and stating my expectations on how I want my students to use them throughout the year. These concepts also help with student behavior, which significantly impacts students’ academic success.
- Slow Down, Pay Attention, and Focus on Details
I like to call these the Keys to Success in the classroom. I teach students the value of slowing down in their work rather than seeing it as a race to finish it as quickly as possible. The next concept goes with this key to success. I also teach students to pay attention to not only what they are working on but the work they produce. Finally, I discuss the invaluable lesson of focusing on details. This comes into play with every subject content. The keys to success are reviewed on EVERY assignment that students are given. Within a week in school, all I need to say is, “What are the keys to success for this assignment?”, and students will respond with, “Slow down, pay attention, and focus on details!”. By the end of the first semester, students’ work is twice as good as when they started, and they have shown tremendous academic progress.
- Slow is smooth. Smooth is fast!
This concept is a Marine Scout Sniper motto. It also builds on one of the keys to success, but I make this concept a separate focus. Whether it is reading, math, writing, or what have you, students are trained to get through their work. This is a horrible concept and does a disservice to students. The faster students go, the more mistakes are made. If we teach students the value of slowing down, they become much smoother in their work and make fewer mistakes. When students understand that slow is smooth and smooth is fast, their mistakes better represent where they are struggling, as going fast causes them to make mistakes that shouldn’t have happened. As an educator, I encourage learning and build academic success. This won’t happen if students rush or think they need to blow through their work to get it done. This means they need to change their mindset.
- Life doesn’t get easier. You get better at doing hard things!
Students struggle in the area of grit, perseverance, and resilience. This happens because they are given so much help in their work that they are not forced to struggle. When students struggle, they want to quit. This is especially true when it comes to academics. Classrooms need to promote grit, perseverance, and resilience. Students can skip over something or get differentiated work when things get complicated. Some teachers will give answers rather than allow students to struggle. It is only through the struggle that learning occurs. This real-world concept promotes a mindset focused on doing hard things and getting better at doing hard things. In my classroom, students are given an assignment they must complete after some front-loading and teaching time. Sometimes these assignments are group work, while other assignments are individual work. Students are given an entire class period to work on the assignment. They can come to me and get it checked at any time during their work time. I will look over their work, mark what they got correct and leave the incorrect work blank. I hand it back, and they have to go back and figure out what they did wrong and make corrections. The first three weeks of this bring tears, frustration, and anger in students. However, I let them struggle. I allow them to feel all these things and encourage them to work through them. After a month, students’ academic progress increases, and their self-confidence also increases. Ultimately, students start to see success in their academics.
These are only four concepts out of many that I teach in the classroom. These concepts are reviewed daily. Students write about them, focus on them, and are expected to meet them. My students’ academic success in my classroom has only increased throughout the years since I started to promote and encourage mindset before academics. After all, without the right mindset, students will quit their learning before they even begin. If you want to see academic success, stop pushing more content and interventions and start focusing on mindset.
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