Governing isn't easy

Today, we read a couple articles on growth mindset.

This one is advocacy, encouraging commitment to growth mindset.  It's the kind of article that can sometimes feel burdensome to teenage readers.  It comes off too school-y and pushy.  It's right, has good points...just kind of pedantic in the delivery.

This one is a personal story of perseverance.  Ta-Nehisi Coates learning French is a bit more engaging and relatable.  

Plenty of students acknowledged that growth mindset was part of their progress and improvement with a musical instrument or in a sport.

So that allowed me to remind them that our committee work is new and a bit confusing, and therefore takes some sustained commitment in order for us to get better at it.  To put it another way, growth mindset actually is important.

The committees are indeed advancing the work of governing their classes.

Sure, the Rules committee hasn't covered every rule as thoroughly as we need, and more specificity in some of the rules is necessary, but they're working at it.

And almost every Social committee has designed a survey intended to find out how students are "feeling" about school and our class.  They don't love the district-wide survey we've been taking for years, so they wanted to develop their own.

The Curriculum committees are planning our reading and work for The Boys in the Boat, and I heard one member declare to her fellow members, "This is complicated."  But they're doing it!

The Liaisons to Administration are meeting with principals to keep them posted on what the rest of the committees are doing.

The Data Committee is gathering whole-class academic performance data, starting with self-assessments of key skills.

The students are, in other words, taking a kind of responsibility that I have not even been able to cultivate in prior years, when using more typical patterns of culture and order building.  (Let me be clear, I'm not saying those typical patterns don't work...these new ones work differently, and so far they seem to work a bit more richly.)

I'm pleased with the progress, not so much for the specific outcomes they've generated but for the work at the process.