Gemma Sanchez (Grow Your Mindset): Growth Mindset

In this Teachers’ Podcast episode, Claire meets with Gemma Sanchez a former teacher, SENDCO and now co-founder of Grow Your Mindset.   Gemma discusses the importance of growth mindset for teachers, pupils and schools. She explains her teaching journey as well as how she developed her passion of learning about growth mindset with her colleague Liz. Gemma suggests some strategies that teachers can implement within the classroom. Furthermore, she explains the importance of teachers reflecting upon their growth mindset. She also explains the characteristics of a fixed and growth mindset, in addition to providing advice on how to overcome certain obstacles in relation to growth mindset in children.   Gemma and Claire discuss why growth mindset should be implemented within schools for all staff including non-teaching staff and children. She also suggests how Grow Your Mindset has created a curriculum to support growth mindset. They discuss how to promote a growth mindset culture and how this can be achieved.   KEY TAKEAWAYS  Gemma started her teaching career in 2003 in a small primary school in Radcliffe.   She then worked at another school for 9 years, 7 of which she was the Special Educational Needs Co-Ordinator (SENCO).  This is where Gemma became very passionate about creativity in the classroom.   Being a SENCO in a school with a high number of SEND children and a high deprivation rate, enabled Gemma to grow and develop her skills. She then moved to a leafy green suburb school closer to home for the role of ‘Curriculum Innovator’.  At this school, Gemma had the opportunity to maintain and develop the love she had for creativity.   Gemma spent three years at this school and met her colleague Liz.   Gemma and Liz were asked by their headteacher about ‘Habits of Mind’. Staff found that even though it was a leafy lane school, children lacked resilience, gave up quite quickly and wanted to learn straight away.   Gemma started to look at ‘Habits of Mind’ but quickly learnt that ‘Grown Mindset’ underpinned ‘Habits of Mind’.  Gemma and Liz went to a course about leading growth mindset. Gemma and Liz were extremely inspired by the training and began implementing the suggested strategies in their classes.  Shortly after, they both realised that they must implement these strategies for themselves and began delivering training to staff in their school.  Schools within the area became very intrigued and started to ask for the training Gemma and Liz delivered.  They than began their journey of delivering training to schools and teachers on Friday’s, holding INSET days and Twilight sessions.   In July 2018, Gemma and Liz terminated their contract with their school and starting ‘Grow Your Mindset’.    Through Grow Your Mindset, Gemma and Liz now provide staff training, offer INSET days, workshops for children, work with parents and work with non-teaching staff including the caretaker.   They try to ensure the content is relevant with and support the curriculum.   They also aim to develop a culture of growth mindset with everyone working in and around schools.  Together Gemma and Liz have created a curriculum of what growth mindset should look like in the classroom.  Gemma outlines what growth mindset is by breaking it down into two parts. Mindset is your persona, it’s what you believe, it’s what you think, it’s how you behave.   Gemma goes on to explain that our mindset is extremely powerful because our brain controls ours body, but our mind controls our brain.   Gemma and Liz looking at the difference between a growth mindset and a fixed mindset.  Sanchez explains that a fixed mindset person is when someone avoids challenges, say it’s too easy but don’t actually do the challenge, are worried about what people think about them, don’t put themselves forward for tasks as they are worried people might judge them, might feel threatened by someone else’s success. If someone is doing better than them, they might feel jealous, they maybe unkind, they may take feedback as a personal criticism.   She also suggests that we default to a fixed mindset because it keeps us safe.   Sanchez then explains that a growth mindset is when they push themselves out of their comfort zone, don’t worry about what anyone else is thinking but mainly concentrate about developing yourself as a person and being the best version of yourself.   Gemma suggests that teachers should focus on themselves before implementing the strategies in the classrooms.  Teachers should really focus on what triggers them to have a fixed or negative mindset.   Sanchez says if teachers focus on themselves it is a very powerful tool because they can share their experiences with the children.   Sharing elements of their fixed mindset with the children makes it real for them – they can see that teachers can make mistakes but it’s okay.   From this, the children can give some good advice about what the teachers should do.   Gemma and Liz observed very quickly that children who deemed themselves to be low achievers started to become confident and developed their self-esteem quickly through appropriate growth mindset strategies. They wanted to give things a go and face new challenges. Due to this their academic achievement improved quite rapidly which closed the achievement gap.   Sanchez narrates a story of a young boy who had ADHD and found school very stressful. At the time he was in Year 4 working on fractions and after a thorough teacher input and work with interactive activities of flashcards, whiteboards, matching he was told to start his work independently. However, after 5 minutes he refused to do the work and started to display some characteristics of a fixed mindset.   Gemma then approached the boy and sat with him to discuss and talk about what happened and how he was feeling. She started asking him arithmetic questions that he could solve. She began to explain to him that we learn at different stages and that’s okay. She reminded him of the progress he has made since he started school instead of him comparing himself to others.  Gemma and Liz start their training sessions by getting teachers to reflect on themselves. They should recognise where they are regarding their own mindset.   They then move onto the language and how the language we hear, how the language we use with our colleagues and the children affects our mindset. This is because what we say affects the children’s mindset, what our colleagues say affects our mindset.   Sanchez says that if a child says, ‘I can’t do it’ the teacher’s response should be ‘well no one can do it in the beginning because we are learning something completely new.’  Sanchez also suggests we should educate them about the brain and the neurology behind it including how we make connections and links.   LIFE/Work Balance – Sanchez insists leadership must change. Management shouldn’t be so OFSTED focused, they should do what is right for the school and their staff. LIFE/Work Balance has got to be addressed.   Sanchez believes we need a massive change in education. She believes it is too results driven and too numbered focussed. Children are not children they are statistics. It should be about developing these amazing people into lifelong well-rounded people.   BEST MOMENTS  “A few posters going up and just adding ‘yet’ on to the end of ‘I can’t do it’, But it’s a lot more than that.”  “All the theory is out there but what we couldn’t find what it should feel like in the classroom, what it should look like, what we should hear when we are in the classroom or going around the school.”  “Whatever is going on in our head is being controlled by our mind.”  “If you think that your brain controls your body, well your mind controls your brain.”  “The element of growth is to do with thriving, being resilient, being a risk-taker, open to continuous learning you are not afraid of making mistakes.”  “Is it your response to a challenge? Is it your response to feedback? Do you home in on the negative parts? Is it your response to effort? Is it your self believe? Or are you worried about making mistakes?”  “It is really important that your classroom is a safe space. If someone does make a mistake or someone is feeling like they can’t be bothered, that’s okay but how can we change that.”  “The important thing about growth mindset is that we keep sending those messages over and over again because eventually we are nudging in to becoming growth orientated.”  “The most important thing for a teacher to do is reflect upon their mindset.”  “Growth mindset is scientifically proven to reduce the symptoms of mental illness. If started early with primary children, it can prevent it in later life.”  “Schools have got to make a decision for themselves.”  VALUABLE RESOURCES  The Teachers’ Podcast: https://www.facebook.com/groups/TheTeachersPodcast/ Classroom Secrets Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ClassroomSecretsLimited/ Classroom Secrets website: https://classroomsecrets.co.uk/ LIFE/work balance campaign: https://classroomsecrets.co.uk/lifeworkbalance-and-wellbeing-in-education-campaign-2019/ Grow Your Mindset: https://www.growyourmindset.co.uk/ Karen Bramwell: http://leadinglearning.co.uk/karen-bramwell/  ABOUT THE HOST Claire Riley  Claire, alongside her husband Ed, is one of the directors of Classroom Secrets, a company she founded in 2013 and which provides outstanding differentiated resources for teachers, schools, parents and tutors worldwide.  Having worked for a number of years as a teacher in both Primary and Secondary education, and experiencing first-hand the difficulties teachers were facing finding appropriate high-quality resources for their lessons, Claire created Classroom Secrets with the aim of helping reduce the workload for all school staff.  Claire is a passionate believer in a LIFE/work balance for those who work in education citing the high percentage of teachers who leave or plan to leave their jobs each year. Since February 2019, Classroom Secrets has been running their LIFE/work balance campaign to highlight this concerning trend.  The Teachers’ Podcast is a series of interviews where Claire meets with a wide range of guests involved in the field of education. These podcasts provide exciting discussions and different perspectives and thoughts on a variety of themes which are both engaging and informative for anyone involved in education. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.