Mi Fracaso y Mentalidad En La Escuela: The Bilingual Struggle
Has there ever been a moment where you felt helpless at school, at work or even just out in public? To be more specific, have you ever had to struggle because of a language you know that isn’t English? As someone who attends school, I see different people react to failure in a very different variety of ways. The reaction of each person all depends on their mindset. The only person that gets to control your mindset is yourself. If a person fails a test or gets a score lower than expected, a person with a fixed mindset will believe that this assignment/test will define them or determine who they will be in the future. People with a fixed mindset don’t know how to cope with failure which makes them put themselves down by saying things like “I’m stupid” or they blame other people for their failure. On the other hand, people with a growth mindset see their failure as a way of motivation to do better next time. But, sometimes people with a fixed mindset can later change their mindset to a growth mindset. After reading Carol Dweck’s book, Mindset, I agree with her thesis that our mental mindsets can and must be changed, “Mindsets are an important part of your personality, but you can change them.”(46) As someone who had difficulty with school work, I fluctuated with my mindset. At first, I had a growth mindset but slowly it turned into a fixed mindset but as the years went on, I now have a growth mindset again. It was completely my choice and sometimes I didn’t even know I was changing my mindset. There is sometimes that I still have a little bit of a fixed mindset left over, but I’m still learning how to fully change it to a growth mindset.
My first language was Spanish because I live in a Mexican household. I understood no English going into kindergarten so it was very difficult for me to communicate with others, let alone my teacher. Whenever we were assigned a worksheet, I always got little to nothing right. Since I didn’t understand English, I didn’t know what it meant to “fail”. At that time my mindset was more of a growth mindset because even if I was struggling, I was still willing to learn English. As the years went on in elementary school, I got placed into an English Learning Development class and that’s when I realized I was struggling more than the other students. I was in the ELD class for almost 6 years and I thought that I was never going to pass that class. I believed that I was just plain stupid and that is when I developed a fixed mindset. I never did anything to help me get out of that class such as read more or practice my writing. I was just satisfied with doing whatever homework or classwork that was assigned to me. Studying made me feel like I was just wasting my time because I thought that either way I was just going to fail. I would always blame my failure on the teacher for “not teaching well.” In the book Mindset, Dweck states that people with a fixed mindset blame everything else for their failures but themselves, “Another way people with the fixed mindset try to repair their self-esteem after a failure is by assigning blame or making excuses.”(36) By doing this, it made me feel better about myself. That I wasn’t the problem, the teacher was. Regardless of other students graduating that class way before more me, I never wanted to believe that I just wasn’t good at writing, reading or even speaking English. This lead to me having a mindset that affected the rest of the subjects I was learning. Another way of building up my self-esteem was by comparing test scores with others, “For example, they may go looking for people who are even worse off than they are.”(36) Dweck states this because this is a way of people with a fixed mindset to avoid studying or accepting their failure. As someone that would always get moderate grades, I would always look around to see who did worse than me. This gave me a sense of relief because I wouldn’t think that I was the only one that did bad.
Although I had a fixed mindset for those 6 years in that ELD class, towards the end of it I realized that my only way out of it was to try. I found ways to improve my English in the ways that I could. After trying things like studying and seeking for help, I started getting better grades. In 8th grade, I finally got out of the ELD class and once I got into high school I was placed into regular English classes. Since I got out of that ELD class I felt like I had finally accomplished something. It did take me longer than the other students in that class to get out of it but I finally did it. At first, the regular English classes were a bit more challenging but they were doable. I noticed myself caring more about my grades and how even though I didn’t get the ideal grade that I wanted, I didn’t give up. Just like how Dweck said in her novel, “If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again”(9). When this happened I started noticing that my mindset about school was changing. This new attitude wasn’t just for my English class but also the rest of my classes. The majority of my teachers provided all their students an opportunity to fix an assignment/test we didn’t do so well on and every chance I had to fix something, I did it. Before I would have just thought “If at first you don’t succeed you probably don’t have the ability.”(9) Now I see those failed assignments as an opportunity to get better at it. This struggle made it worth it in the end. Since my first language was Spanish I thought my English was never going to be good enough, but even I surprised myself with the knowledge I know now.
Going back to the novel, Dweck said, “Even in the growth mindset, failure can be a painful experience”(33), but it’s something to look into to try to get better at, not. Let failure be a wake-up call or an opportunity to do better rather than letting it drain your self-esteem. Throughout the whole journey of my different mindsets, I believe that the story of Groundhog Day is the one that connects with my story the most. He started by being under a spell that repeated the same day over and over and he was okay with it because he was able to control everything that was going to happen. This excitement of things staying the same is a sign of a fixed mindset. That was until he eventually got tired of it and tried multiple ways of getting out of it but eventually, he realized he could be using his time more wisely. He started learning new things, started doing things he’s never done before and even helped some people out in need. In the end, he finally got out of the spell. The whole time he just needed to change his fixed mindset to a growth one to get out of it. This shows how all I had to do was just put some effort into my school work to get out of that ELD class. I had believed that I was going to just get out of it just by doing what I was told to do, but I had to do more work than expected. Once I did put in that extra effort, I was out of that class in a blink of an eye.
In conclusion, everyone has the ability to change their mindset if they want to. Rather than letting failure define you, you have to define yourself by making sure failure is just a way of motivating you. Putting in the effort is what will help you in the long run, “effort is what makes you smart or talented.”(15) Putting in effort won’t be something you will regret, but not putting in the effort will be something you will regret. Regardless of how challenging something may be, it is important to know what you are capable of and even going beyond it. Now that I am older and have learned from my failures, I want to learn and succeed. I started as a Spanish speaker and now I can proudly say I am a fluent English speaker. I still sometimes make mistakes and that’s because I’m human but every time I do, I just learn from it. Now I have one of the best skills, being fluent in two languages. At this point in my life, I was “studying to learn, not just to ace the test.”(61) If I did ace a test then that was just a bonus that motivated me to continue doing the extra work that I know will help me get there. I knew that all that hard work and different mindset on things were paying off. Without the experience then I wouldn’t have been able to change my mindset but luckily I did. If I didn’t decide to change then who knows what classes I would be placed into in high school or even now. Without the struggle, I wouldn’t have been able to get to where I am today. When I was younger I always believed that being in my comfort zone was better than getting out of it and now I never want to look back at my comfort zone.
