Mind Set Go

Although I spent many years life studying at Boston University (BU) as an undergraduate and graduate student, it was at Boise State (BSU) where I encountered higher education from the vantage of a “growth mindset” while pursuing a Master’s degree.  When Dr. Pat Bieter walked into a room and started presenting at BSU, it was as if all was right with the world.  He asked, back in 1988, “What do you call thinking about thinking?”  It was there that I first heard the word metacognition. 

It was in the 1970s that psychologist John Flavell first used the term, which literally means above or beyond thinking, and perhaps Dr. Pat Bieter had studied Flavell’s work.  (I didn’t realize it, but had I taken an introductory course in statistics, I would have had a minor in psychology as an undergrad at BU.  I only mention this, as I had had many courses in psychology, and I could not remember having encountered the term by the early 1980s.  Or… maybe it was because of the way Bieter taught, making education fun and fascinating and exuding his own passion about learning and demonstrating that he, too, was a lifelong learner, that I first really listened to the word.)

I had had an eighth grade history teacher, Mr. Bronowicz, who taught very much the same way as Dr. Bieter.  Not all teachers proceed from the growth premise, however.  I cannot help but remember how brutal a teacher I encountered as a parent had been to second grade students who made mistakes, were not top of their class or were even new to town.  I recently read a book entitled Mindset The New Psychology of Success: How we can learn to fulfill our potential by Carol S. Dweck, Ph.D (2006) that helped me understand the mindset of that particular teacher. 

If a person has a fixed mindset, Dweck describes, they do not believe a person can cultivate growth through achievement, but, rather, believes that people have fixed, deep-rooted traits with no potential for growth.  This, Dweck asserts, is a fixed mindset.  Dweck identifies that many people have been victimized by the fixed mindset, encouraging them to believe they are incapable of growth or potential if they believe they are not born with innate talent.  Using clear examples of leaders and teachers, her work enlightens parents how to become better parents and how all of us can thrive from a mindset of challenging ourselves to achieve and grow through hard work, proper attitude (or mindset) and commitment.  This is the growth mindset.

In Dr. Vivek H. Murthy’s book entitled Together: The healing power of human connection in a sometimes lonely world, (2020) the 19^th Surgeon General of the US enlightens his readers that it is human connection that makes the difference in this sometimes lonely world.  He describes what it must have been like for his own parents to leave their country of India to set up medical practices and to assimilate first in Newfoundland and then in the United States.  But it was people who they connected with and who connected with them that made all the difference. 

I had a unique opportunity to spend 4 years conducting interviews.  I met and interviewed people in the fields of religion as chaplains, sociology, psychology, family support, spouses, children and military members.  I asked them what was working and what was not.  I wanted to know what they needed and how they felt.  I visited all but one of 90 wings and 11 centers in 50 states, 3 territories and one district.  Except for a trip or two, it was all done “on my own dime,” using perks I had to travel and purchasing discounted fares.  I wasn’t paid, but the “work” was tremendous.  I often said, “It might have taken me 23 hours to get to Alaska Space A, but I made it!” 

I left every single place I visited marvelling, “I could live there!”  You see, it wasn’t the place.  It wasn’t the place at all.  It was the people.  It was how they reached out and cared for one another and… how they all shared a common mission.  They had purpose.  And so did I.  I learned quite a bit about human nature, giving back and making a difference.  Change was initiated by asking, listening and documenting.

I am reading a book right now entitled Sailing Alone Around the World by Captain Joshua Slocum.  Because it had been said that it could not be done, Slocum embarked on at journey in 1895 that lasted until 1898, to sail alone around the world in his yawl, The Spray.  The book is basically his journal.  While there are practices he had (such as shooting at anything that appeared to move on shore when hoards of “savages” were congregating to attack him) that might be challenged today, the fact that he and his 34-foot boat survived the journey is a testament to hard work, perseverance, growth and adaptability.  With a lack of human connection for most of the journey, with adapting and overcoming challenging circumstances and through perhaps a dose of good luck, Slocum circumnavigated the earth at a time when conditions were extreme at best—in terms of lack of support and communication. 

We, as human beings, need each other.  We can make a difference.  We can learn and grow and thrive with the proper mindset.  We can stop lashing out, stop overthinking, and we can flourish realizing the potential each of us possesses.

I had never heard of Dweck when I named this website.  So, I was fascinated when I recently learned of her work through a course I took at Harvard Medical School Executive Medicine entitled, Lifestyle and Wellness Coaching.  In that course people from all over the world gathered for 6 weeks to learn about lifestyle medicine and coaching techniques from Dr. Beth Frates and Dr. Robert Brooks.  Drs. Michelle Tollefson and Erica Veazey facilitated.  My peers were physicians, professional coaches and health enthusiasts.  These professionals make wellness coaching look and seem easy.  Of course, it is an art and a science, and it is through work and growth that we all can become versed in wellness whether as a professional or an enthusiast.

While reluctant to call myself a coach, I realize that in 35 years of teaching privately, 17 years at a private boarding school and 10 years at a state university, much of what I did was coaching wellness.  While this course offers a certificate and not a certification in wellness coaching, I spent dacades of my life as a coach in education.  Perhaps the most dynamic and rewarding experience I had in coaching may surprise you:

While finishing a Master”s degree from Boise State, I took as job for two years at a state on the northeastern coast of the US.  It was the early 90s, and inclusion was new.  I worked with a female child in conjunction with two classroom teachers (one each year) and a behavioral specialist for two years.  It came to my attention that the behaviorial specialist was not happy that I landed the job, however.  I heard that she wanted her friend, a certified teacher, to get the job. Yes, jobs were scarce back then and qualified teachers were becoming paraprofessionals. But I had been hired when I honestly told the principal in the interview, “It doesn’t matter to me where this student is in her learning, we will start there and move forward.”  On the first day, when I asked the behavioral specialist about what the IEP was and what was on it, she snapped at me and said, “I can’t give you a degree in special education, and you have no right to know anything about this girl.”  Welcome to the job. 

Yes, I was told nothing except that the girl was “mentally retarded” with a 3-year-old mentality, was in third grade (followed by fourth grade the next year) and was a couple of years older than her “normal” peers.  I soon realized that her limited vocabulary consisted of two-word groups.  She hit me.  She spit on me.  She tore at my clothes.  Aids was a new epidemic in the world, and I was given no medical history of this person who was spitting on me and pulling my hair daily. 

Instead of giving up, I persevered.  It wasn’t about me.  I was utterly fascinated with the world of learning and with her world.  I soon realized that when she retorted over and over, “Blue truck; blue truck,” that she was, in fact, asking me to talk to her about my blue truck.  “I took my child to preschool in my blue truck,” I told her.  “Blue truck; blue truck; blue truck!!”  

We were together in regular classrooms and her actual teachers trusted me.  They had never had a child diagnosed with special needs in their classrooms much less a paraprofessional.  I designed her education.  I reported to them of her progress, and they also saw it firsthand. 

I used musical chant to teach her to verbally “spell” her 11-letter last name.  She began speaking, and within two years she used full sentences except for articles.  The speech pathologist who had worked with her could not believe the progress.  I asked if we could leave the classroom to have the student greet the UPS man (she was infatuated with the deliveries) and she was able to maneuver packages around the school on a dolly after tracing big letters and numbers I had written on the boxes.  UPS gave her a shirt to wear.  The intercom would come on, and the principal would personally ask her to come to the office for the pick-ups. 

Once as my neck was careened down in a hair-lock hold, I reached out and very gently tugged her hair to see what she would do.  Maybe it would help her understand what she was doing?  She could speak at this point, and she alerted, “Ms. Rice pull my hair; Ms. Rice pull my hair.”  Okay, so that didn’t work.  Instead, on one day while my hair and head were yanked down, I declared, “I don’t feel that.  I don’t feel that.”  It was then that she stopped manhandling me and ripping my sweater or shirt off of my shoulder.

I explained to her, as she felt badly going through puberty “on my watch” that it was okay to feel bad.  I knew she felt bad, and I let her know that I knew.  I cared.  And, I told her, “You can pick.  Do you want to have a good day, or do you want to have a bad day?”  “Bad day,” she said, and she stuck her tongue out at me.  “Okay.  It’s okay.  You can have a bad day.  Let’s go over to your desk, and you can have a bad day.  Put your head on your desk.  It’s okay.  But… I’m going to have a good day,” I told her.  I went to my desk and proceeded to work on her curriculum, smiling, even though it had already been one heck of a day.  And then, after a while, I heard it.  “Good day.”  She was telling me that she was choosing to have a good day.  Later I taught her to say, “I feel bad.”

I am convinced that I learned much more than I gave her; we impacted each other’s lives in those two years.  While I was not invited to the IEP meetings, her mother and I conversed daily in a journal much to the chagrin of the behavioral specialist.  I was basically punished for doing so.  I’d have to stand and wait every day to have the specialist check what I had written wasting precious educational time with the student in the hallway outside the behavioral specialist’s room.  The specialist sent me outside on my lunch breaks to watch other students with behavioral issues with their own IEPs during recess.  I finally stated that the journal would be ready and on my desk by a certain time if she’d like to check it.

Over and over I heard specialists say, “She will never…”  She will never tie her shoes.  She tied her shoes.  I taught her and other children with exceptionalities how to tie their shoes.  The classroom teachers knew what I was doing, and they wondered why I didn’t want a class of my own.  Why was I “satisfied” with being a paraprofessional?

I was given an opportunity.  I have to admit that I initially took the paraprofessional job with the prerequisite of a high school education to give us medical insurance.  My husband had taken an entry level job at a commuter airline.  It provided no insurance and paid very little income. 

After school as a paraprofessional, I went home to teach piano, theory and composition to private students, a job I had held for some time.  But what I learned about metacognition those two years was invaluable.  Decades later, when selecting a topic for my dissertation, I wanted to document the experiences of teachers and parents, parents whose children were pursuing music education post-secondarily.  I knew I had had to fight to communicate with parents decades before.  And I also knew that it was parents who insisted upon education for their children with exceptionalities, and that public school education for students with disabilities had, in fact, happened in my lifetime when I was already a teenager.  Their children were provided education due to parents’ persistence and insistence, complete with legal battles to get them there.  Parents hold invaluable information that should be shared yet they had had no voice in research.

Research had not been done in this field.  I was told that it was too broad a field to document some teachers’ and parents’ experiences and to, instead, only write about parents’ experiences; then that professor began doing the research about teachers’ experiences, himself. No wonder he did not want me to do it!

My next “read” will be the paper, The history of mindset: Honouring lineage, transcending partial stories, making mindset research and practice an interdisciplinary and intergenerational project” by Ash Buchanan (2024) and Charles Duhigg’s book, The Power of Habit: Why we do what we do in life and business” (2012).

Sometimes I write entries for blog posts, and I don’t post them.  I wonder if I say “I” too much.  I wonder if there is too much personal information I’m putting out there on the web.  But I know that my purpose is to help, nurture and teach others.  To share. 

Stay the course.  Connect.  Make a difference.  Choose to have a good day.  Think about thinking and especially remember those teachers who fostered education in your lifetime through growth mindsets long before there was a name for it.  Dare to make a difference, whether you are thanked, appreciated and/or understood.  It matters, and you matter.