Grow your Growth Mindset
Knowledge
Last week in Assembly I was talking to the children of Edenhurst about New Year’s traditions and history. This led us on to the subject of New Year’s resolutions. I have never been a big fan of these because from my experience they seldom see out January. But why is that?
Most of our resolutions are very good ideas and if adhered to, would greatly improve our lives. What is it that makes us give up on them so easily? Why is it that at the first failure we throw in the towel? This thought has stayed with me for the past few weeks, and I have a theory: When we make resolutions we automatically assume that the first failure is the end of them. That is not an approach that sits well with Growth Mindset theory. With that in mind, this year my first resolution and one that I have encouraged all the Edenhurst children to adopt is to ‘Grow your Growth Mindset’. A big part of this is that we recognise that failure is an inevitable yet valuable part of learning.
As a teaching staff, we spent a big proportion of our training day designing a ‘Growth Mindset’ toolkit to share with your children. This will continue to be developed over the coming months because we recognise the importance of it in equipping our children to cope with the demands of our rapidly evolving society.
Coming back to resolutions, I have realised that I am most likely going to get it wrong a few times, but if I reboot and try again, I will eventually get better. So that is what I am going to do. Why not join your children and me in resolving to ‘Grow your Growth Mindset’ this year? Maybe this will give those other well-meaning resolutions a fighting chance to alter all of our lives for the better.
Michael Hibbert
Headteacher at Edenhurst Prep School