Creating a More Growth Minded Classroom: Growth Zones
I want to tell you the story of my coaching relationship with my friend Shea Williams. Ms. Williams and I both attended Albion College’s Shurmur Center for Teacher Development. When I began coaching teachers on how to incorporate growth mindset strategies alongside their existing curriculum, I asked if she would be one of our first ‘collaborating educators’. These teachers help us develop and test new growth mindset “plays” for our “Growth Mindset Playbook”- a collection of strategies and lessons that help students develop a growth mindset. All we ask in return is critical feedback on everything we give them. Over the last semester, Ms. Williams and I have seen an impressive transformation in her classroom.
Ms. Williams teaches at a school in the Traverse City Public School system that classifies itself as “alternative.” Students have to self select and interview in order to attend. Classes are much smaller and teachers expect students to have unique learning needs.
Ms. Williams, like all teachers, struggled with engagement.
Despite small class sizes, Ms. Williams, like all teachers, struggled with engagement. Students would consistently shut down during independent work time. Ms. Williams said it was more than just students being bored from time to time, but that students actually “struggle with the process of learning how to learn” and could be “slow to pick up study skills.” During independent work time, students “didn’t know it was okay to struggle on their own.”
In the some cases, students could be so dependent on teacher help that the second she left their side, they stopped working until she returned to help again. Ms. Williams found this extra frustrating because she knows her students are capable; especially when they get the help they need.
When people approach us with concerns similar to Shea’s, we tend to focus our coaching relationship on our “Struggle Message.” At Pomegranate Lab, we believe there are 4 messages that make up a person’s mindset: mistakes, struggle, feedback and success. Within each “message” there is a central belief and a number of skills that help us maintain a growth mindset despite how much easier it would be to give in to fixed minded behavior.
The central belief in the struggle message is: “Struggle is the only way we learn, not something to be avoided.”
After discussing why embracing independent struggle as part of the learning process was such an important skill for her students and what she had already done to encourage them, Ms. Williams and I agreed that she should try our “Growth Zones” play. Below is our simplified one-page description of the strategy:
The basic premise here is a student-friendly explanation of the zone of proximal development. Depending on who we are and our prior experiences, new experiences always put us in one of three states of mind: so comfortable we’re learning very little, enough out of comfort zone where we’re learning, or so uncomfortable that we’re ‘panicking’ and incapable of productive learning. It’s like the neuroscience version of the Goldilocks story; except unlike Goldilocks, our job as life long learners is to expand our growth zone by spending as much time there as possible.
Ms. Williams decides that just introducing this topic to her students was a large enough experiment for our first coaching cycle. It began with a discussion with her students about the experiences and emotions they have within each zone. She presented a list of example experiences and invited students to debate what zone they would be in during the experience.
Students were very honest about how they reacted in each zone. They were quick to observe that everyone had a unique answer to how uncomfortable they might be in a situation and that people responded differently to that level of stress. Some were quick to admit that they typically reacted poorly in the panic zone and pointed to habits they used as defensive mechanisms to remove themselves from the situation and feel comfortable again - like shutting down or causing a distraction.
everyone has a unique answer to how uncomfortable they might be in a situation, and that people have a choice of how they respond to that level of stress.
After introducing the Growth Zones concept, Ms. Williams asked students to self-evaluate their effort at the end of the day. While not all students found the experience meaningful, Ms. Williams was surprised to see that some students were reporting themselves as panicking or too comfortable. These self-reports gave her insight into both why and how these students were struggling so frequently.
Ms. Williams left her drawing of the growth zones up for the following week and continued to ask individual students what zone they were in whenever she caught them disengaged. This alone helped her manage student behavior by giving the class common language to address these issues.
The next time we met, Ms. Williams and I talked about how we could improve upon this self-report phenomenon. We agreed that the whole class should try to develop a personal understanding of each zone. Ms. Williams came up with the idea that students could write out what they look like when they’re in each zone, as well as what specific situations caused them to jump into the panic zone. Students could also use any extra time to illustrate each zone and draw out how they might feel.
the panic zone, and the poor behavior that accompany it, are typically caused by feelings of embarrassment and anxiety
With the last few minutes of class, Ms. Williams and the students revisited the idea that the panic zone, and the behaviors that accompanies it, are typically caused by feelings of embarrassment and anxiety. Ms. Williams challenged the students to see if they could think of “tools” that people could use to stay in the growth zone instead of retreating to the comfort zone when they started to feel embarrassed or panicked.
A few of the tools they brainstormed where:
- take a 2–3 min break
- skip the problem and come back
- asking friends for help
- posting on the homework help board
- listening to music
- referring back to example problems in the notes
Students picked the strategies they thought were most effective for their personal learning style and recorded them on their worksheet that included their growth zone drawing and description. For the rest of the year, students kept these pieces of paper on their desks during independent work time. They’re commonly referred to as “Struggle Plans” in the class and Ms. Williams frequently relies on them.
Struggle plans are made of: common situations that can cause the student to feel panicked or complacent; and which behaviors they can rely on to get back into the growth zone.
Having this information present at the beginning of the conversation has given Ms. Williams a powerful advantage. When students are obviously frustrated or say they can’t do something, her first response is to ask what steps of their struggle plans they had tried. She then holds them accountable to trying the plan before she rushes to help. Over time, students have gotten used to her asking to see their plans first. This has helped the students develop stamina and stay independent for longer stretches of time.
Ms. Williams has seen an additional benefit of students taking ownership over their behavior. Specifically students who know they have trouble persevering when faced with learning challenges. Despite a history of zoning out and causing distractions, these students took ownership of their learning and were able to find healthy ways to deal with their learning setbacks.
As the semester continued, Ms. Williams reinforced her mantra that, “being frustrated and angry with something is okay. It’s all about how you react to it.” The Growth Zones and struggle plans have been an important way for her to understand why students are frustrated, and why they chose to react with specific behaviors. It’s allowed her to get to know her students better and develop stronger trust with them.
“Being frustrated and angry with something is okay. It’s all about how you react to it.”
At the end of the day it was really important to Ms. Williams that her students knew that everyone’s growth zone is unique and based on personality and experience. Even more importantly, that everyone has the ability to develop and change their zones over time. Just because an activity causes you to panic today, doesn’t mean it won’t be in your growth zone next week.
Ms. Williams’s progress is a great example of the coaching relationship we develop with teachers. We helped her understand what specific skills she wanted her students to develop and then gave her and her students a tool to teach and reinforce the beliefs and skills necessary to become a life-long growth minded learner. Whatever career or future education Ms. William’s students select, they will have a set of tools and beliefs that will help them navigate any situation.
Next year, Ms. Williams is excited to start the year off with this technique in her teacher tool belt. She plans on introducing it right away so that she can learn about and develop her student’s academic habits quickly. We look forward to helping Ms. Williams find ways to make this framework and discussion about sustained struggle even more meaningful and worthwhile.
