It’s been at least five years since I first read Carol Dweck’s Mindset, but it still informs many of my interactions with my students and my own children. This book has been around a while–you hear about it at conferences, we chose it as an NMC Reads book a number of years ago–but if you haven’t read it yet, you might want to put it on your holiday gift list.

Dweck, a psychologist at Stanford, talks about the power of the growth mindset–the attitude that we all have the potential to learn. She explains that as educators we should emphasize hard work not ability. We need to help our students understand that if they don’t understand something it’s not because “I’m just bad at math.” Yes, math may come a bit easier for one person than another, but we need to emphasize that we can always grow our knowledge and learn. Knowledge is not fixed; we were not in the “smart” line or the “dumb” line at birth. Instead, it’s hard work that makes the difference.

So now, when my students or my own children complain that something is hard, I channel Carol Dweck and say, “I know! Isn’t that great?? That’s how you grow your brain. You’d be wasting your time if this was easy.”  They roll their eyes a bit, but I hope that growth mindset is taking root.