Archive for the ‘Leadership Books’ Category

Limitless Mind: Learn, Lead, and Live Without Barriers by Jo Boaler explains what you can do for your own thinking and that of your students to be truly limitless. It draws on educational and brain research that points out that the brain changes when we learn. There is also a focus on the power of mistakes, how changing your mind can change your reality and the benefits of collaboration. Flexible thinking is better than fast thinking and learning is more effective when it is multidimensional. Although Jo comes from the field of math, this book is valuable to all educators and all people.

Introduction: The Six Keys

• We know that the brain changes over time. The concept is called neuroplasticity. This means that if you get stuck when you are trying to learn something, it’s important that you not start thinking that your brain isn’t made for that type of learning. The most common type of learning anxiety that impacts about half of the population is math anxiety. Some also suffer from writing anxiety or think that they have no artistic skills. As the title suggests, everyone should think that their mind and their ability to learn is limitless rather than fixed. This agrees with Carol Dweck’s concept of the growth mindset. See my summary of her book here. When you hit a limit, you need to develop a new strategy rather than quit. Reject stereotypical messages and keep going. Praise students for hard work and creativity rather than telling them they are smart. Above all, make sure they know that you believe in them.

1. How Neuroplasticity Changes Everything

• For the last twenty years or so we have known that the human brain is constantly changing. The brain you have today isn’t the one you woke up with yesterday. We don’t come prewired to be good at some things and bad at other things. We ALL have to work to form and reinforce the neural connections we need to do our jobs and live our lives. The big lesson is don’t let anyone tell you that you can’t learn something and be good at it.
• Boeler sites research that shows how learning disabilities can be overcome with the right kind of brain training. Check out her site at YouCubed.org for more information. There are inspirational stories here about people who were told they couldn’t do something and ended up doing great things. Most schools also have gifted programs. The idea that you can identify some kids as gifted reinforces a fixed-brain way of thinking. Gifted kids can benefit from gifted programs, but when they struggle they are likely to give up thinking that their fixed brain has reached its limit. Regardless of what kind of brain you are born with, what you learn will depend on how hard you work and struggle, not what you started with. Jo also writes about how stereotypes regarding women and minorities can lead to lower expectations and lower achievement.

2. Why We Should Love Mistakes, Struggle, and Even Failure

• The times we struggle and make mistakes are the best times for brain growth. Teachers need to promote this concept and learn how to make students struggle. People who face struggle and stop no doubt have a fixed mindset. Students should know that they don’t always have to be right as it’s not good brain exercise. Schoolwork should be challenging. You learn at the edge of your understanding, which shouldn’t be too easy.
• Self-testing and peer-testing are valuable, as retrieval reinforces your brain’s memory circuits. The steps of struggle include, I don’t know this, this isn’t easy, I’m confused, I need to work hard on this, and I think I’m getting it. All of this is true even for kindergarten or younger. Understanding the positive benefits of mistakes can unlock a limitless life. You don’t want to let children give up to save them from struggle as your efforts are likely to backfire. Rather, support them as they struggle. Never give up on any student. See challenge as an opportunity. Change your negative self-talk to positive self-talk. Be guided by your interests, not your fears.

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The Future of Smart: How Our Education System Needs to Change to Help All Young People Thrive by Ulcca Joshi Hansen is the book for you if you want to make education more authentic, exciting, and valuable for every student in your school. It gives some history of how the factory model of schooling got started and how it still exists in some classrooms. It talks about districts that have tried to bolt on innovations such as projects and internships to conventional schools. It also talks about schools that have made a full transition to what she calls Human-Centered/Liberatory schools. There is a list of 49 US schools she has visited that have made this transition.

Introduction

• Ulcca has visited many schools and some give her a feeling of welcome, openness, and curiosity. Montessori schools generally fall into this category. Do schools kill creativity? Yes. But not all schools. The compelling schools she found did just the opposite. Fostering curiosity and creativity is not straightforward, but it can be done. The purpose of this book is to describe the steps to take if you want your school to match this ideal. We have to ask “how are you smart? rather than “are you smart?” We need to focus on cultivating the unique abilities of each child rather than reinforcing an arbitrary hierarchy of merit. Wealthy parents often pay to send their children to holistic schools, but some of these schools do arise in poor neighborhoods.

Part 1 – Past: A Brief Overview of How We Got Here

1. Education at a Crossroads

• We start with the history of the standardized test movement that started under Clinton in the 1990s and took off with the bipartisan NCLB under Bush 43. It never asked if something was wrong with the system so efforts to get kids to pass tests were added on to the factory system in place that started in the 1800s. There is some explanation about what we know about the differences between our left and right brain. (Watch Iain McGilchrist’s TED Talk “The Divided Brain” for details.) Ulcca feels that the testing has put more emphasis on what the left brain is good at and less on the holistic nature of the right brain to the detriment of all students.

2. The Origins of the Divide Our Modern Worldviews

• Here we explore the clash of the different world views of the indigenous peoples of the Americas and the people of Europe who were strongly influenced by the objectivism of the Scientific Revolution. Indigenous people were indifferent to property ownership, lacked a sophisticated written language, and lived by myths and rituals. These are hallmarks of right-brain thinking. Europeans gave value to everything based on how useful they were (utilitarianism). It’s no surprise that Christian monarchs sent explorers out to expand their faith and improve their fortunes. These are hallmarks of left-brain thinking. We also learn that in China new scientific ideas were incorporated into traditional holistic thinking rather than replacing it. The question then becomes, can we revive indigenous ways of knowing without discarding science or technology?

3. A Worldview Divide in Education

• Before schools were invented, most children learned by experiencing life with their family and their community. In essence, they were home-schooled. Schools were modeled after factories with each child treated like an object that needed to be filled with the same knowledge and skills. The natural world was screened out in the impersonal left-hemisphere-oriented system. Discoveries in physics by Einstein and others showed that nature was interconnected and that the old laws of Newton were only approximations. With this background, reformers of education like Montessori, Steiner, and Krishnamurti developed schools where children could engage with the world and each other to develop as individuals. This is based on the idea the children teach themselves. They also need distance from authority and bureaucracy.

4. Holistic-Indigenous and Ecological (HIL) Values in Education

• The factory model where everyone learns the same things at the same time at the same pace is very unnatural. It features no understanding of child development or uniqueness. Children are separate entities and there is no focus on relationships or collaboration. It is also still the dominant model found in our schools. The HIL system focuses on interconnection and relationships and connections are central. The school is seen as a community. Academic subject matter is still a concern, but so are social-emotional skills. In addition to being consumers of knowledge, students will be producers as they create projects that use things like podcasts, interviews, observations, and conversations along with reading. Assessments give students information on how they can improve the learning process.

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