This past week, I traveled to Cuiabá, the capital of Mato Grosso, a rural state in Brazil whose name translates to “thick woods” in English, to give you an idea of what it’s like. I came here with the purpose of leading a group through a professional development experience focused on growth mindset. The group comprised 20 mentors who lead a program from the state’s department of education focused on strengthening pedagogical practices in schools.
The work to prepare for this week started long before my arrival in Mato Grosso. My initial conversations about the project started in February through a connection I made with a colleague at the World Bank. We got introduced through a friend of mine, which opened the door for me to share a bit about the work I do in the fields of education and motivation. The timing was perfect, as she told me about the need for this kind of work in a project she was working on with a state department of education in Brazil. She invited me to meet with the project team and tell them about the work I do, hear about their program, and see how I might be able to help. She asked for a proposal for what I would do, which I then put together (with some help from a former colleague and friend who used to be a teacher) and submitted.
Then the waiting began, as they went back and forth over whether they would be able to make the training happen and when. It took several months of me checking in until I finally heard that they wanted to move forward, which led to a contract negotiation and finally an agreement. The timing certainly could have been better, as the dates of the training fell during the week my wife and I would need to leave the apartment where we were living in Copacabana for two years to close out our lease, which was also just a week before our move back to the US. Between my normal work, this new project, and the move, I found myself operating on all cylinders for multiple weeks, both leading up to the training and during this past week. I had to prepare the pre- and post-session surveys, generate a complete facilitator’s guide for the three days of training, prepare the pre-reading material for the mentors to have background knowledge beforehand, and communicate with the World Bank to get my account and travel set up properly. I also went above and beyond by talking to some expert researchers beforehand about the nuances of their work on growth mindset to better tailor the program to best practices.
Curiously enough, there was a silver lining to this. I noticed how working at full capacity can actually create a sense of flow and deep engagement with life for me, something I had noticed before but reignited during this period. As I sit and write this on my final day in Cuiabá before I head back to Rio, I don’t feel exhausted, even though I’ve been pushing hard while also maintaining my exercise schedule of working out five to six times per week, on top of speaking basically zero English over the last week. I feel focused, centered, and energized, content with the effort I’ve invested and how much I have learned over the last few weeks.
I started my week in Cuiabá with visits to two state-run public schools, where I got to meet teachers, students, school administrators, and some of the mentors who live around Cuiabá to hear more about their perceptions of the system and their experiences. I also got to meet leaders within the state department of education to understand some of the higher level pieces of the state’s work and objectives. I heard from teachers about the joys and motivating experiences of teaching, challenges they face with students, classroom dynamics they observe, strategies they use, and what would help them in their work. I heard from students about their different perceptions of teachers at their schools, the good and bad parts of school, the challenges they face, their motivations and hopes in school and life, fear of failure, and what they think of their fellow students.
After this brief “listening tour” over the first two days, I made some small updates to the training before spending the next three days training the mentors on growth mindset. I attempted to use some less conventional pedagogical techniques to make the sessions more engaging and useful, giving them a chance to put growth mindset into practice with case examples they have come across in their work.
We started day one with some introductions to get people in the room talking and sharing a bit about their experiences in education, highlighting moments of feeling gratified in their work. I then collected some data from them to see where their attitudes and knowledge were before we got into the training. Before even getting into growth mindset, I had the mentors form groups where they shared the values and motivations that drove their decision to be educators and work in this field, which they then shared with the entire group. This set up my discussion of growth mindset, telling them about how it serves as a great tool to manage the school environment of adolescents with rising levels of testosterone who are looking for signals of respect from the adults in their lives. I shared the value of communicating to students that they are capable of learning if they invest effort, embrace challenges to grow, and try new strategies when their current ones aren’t getting them to their goals. I also shared how the students who are the most difficult are often the students who have histories of feeling underestimated, ignored, or disrespected, and that this growth mindset approach helps them even more, as it engages them in a way that contrasts with what they are used to. From there, I had them reflect on the pre-reading about growth mindset and what they just learned, along with the values they identified in the previous activity, encouraging them to connect the dots of how a growth mindset approach can help them further live the values they shared.
After lunch, small groups created examples of students to set up the next pieces of the activity, which were to make a list of ways a teacher could help that student using growth mindset, along with potential obstacles they may face in implementing those strategies and how the mentors could support them to navigate those obstacles. To close day one, the mentors individually wrote letters to a colleague describing what a growth mindset is, how it connects to their values for being an educator, and the difference it can make in teachers’ and students’ lives.
On day two, I passed the letters back to the mentors and learned all of their names to be able to communicate with each of them individually. They then formed pairs to read the letters they wrote to each other, identifying something they liked and something their partner shared that they want to apply in their own work, which everyone then shared with the broader group. From there, we got back into small groups and followed a similar structure to day one, this time focusing on school teaching coordinators instead of students. They created profiles of these coordinators based on real people they have worked with, built messages for these coordinators using their knowledge of growth mindset, identified potential obstacles those coordinators may face, and then how they can help them navigate those obstacles as mentors. To close day two, I collected feedback from everyone, asking them to share one thing they learned, a persisting question they have, and suggestions for how to improve the training. I affirmed to them that I wanted their honest feedback to be able to know what I could do better.
The night of day two, I was invited out to a local Thursday night event downtown with some of the mentors participating in the training, where there was local food and vendors for families to come and hang out with live music. We had a lot of fun in a lighter atmosphere, where we chatted about life, Cuiabá, the state of Mato Grosso, and Brazil more broadly, with a lot of laughs. I even chatted with a local in line for dinner about fishing, good restaurants in Cuiabá, and his 40 years of marriage. I think it was an evening that helped them to see me with a little more humanity and vice versa. It was an experience that I won’t forget.
Moving to day three, I had originally planned for them to bring a lesson plan and a course syllabus to work on by applying growth mindset principles, but instead I opted to start the day with a deeper dive into the history of growth mindset research based on their feedback. I took what they shared with me to heart, as they informed me that they wanted a more varied pedagogical structure and to dive deeper into the theory of growth mindset and how it has been built over time. This led me to make a wholesale change to how I would approach the final day of the training. I started with Dweck’s first published study on the topic from 1973 that was rooted in questions about learned helplessness and finished with recent work on the importance of student perceptions of teacher mindset from researchers like Katie Muenks, Elizabeth Canning, and Mary Murphy, and an enhanced growth mindset intervention that focuses on values for teaching and connects growth mindset to those values from Cameron Hecht, David Yeager, and Christopher Bryan.
I closed this initial session by bringing in Joseph Campbell’s model of the hero’s journey from his The Hero with a Thousand Faces. I hadn’t connected growth mindset research to this more theoretical concept from history and mythology before, but wanted to test it because of the conviction I have developed over the last couple of years about the deep connection between the two. This part really opened people’s eyes and connected the dots in a way that excited me so much. I could see just how applicable all of this felt after I shared the model, leaving them more confident in their ability to bring this to their mentees in an accessible and relevant way.
This shift ended up being extremely fruitful, engaging the mentors even more than the previous days, helping them to further build and consolidate the knowledge they had been building from their group work over the previous days. I also allowed many opportunities to answer questions during the session, as it was clear that they still had uncertainties about the material from the feedback I requested. After this initial session, the difference in their attitudes towards the topic and how it applies to their work was palpable, leaving me feeling deeply gratified.
To finish the third day, I had them review the mentor protocols they use to identify opportunities for growth mindset messaging in small groups, which they then shared out with the broader group. After this, we concluded with the creation of a script that they could take with them to their interactions with their mentees, which ended up surprising me because some groups went above and beyond to create entire plans for a day-long training that they could deliver to their mentees to train them on growth mindset. I then collected some final reflections in a post-training survey that allowed me to see how their attitudes changed over the course of the three days we were together.
I part from Cuiabá feeling proud of how the mentors grew through our time together. Their attitudes opened as they learned more about growth mindset, seeing how they need to see the students and adults in schools as people who can grow and change, even if they are resistant and challenging at first. I felt personally connected to them in a way that I didn’t anticipate, which warmed my heart and left me feeling deep joy and satisfaction. It was an experience that reinforced my love for this kind of work and how lucky I am to do what I do.
It’s a feeling that I know so few people get to experience in this life when it comes to work. I suppose that feeling is a driver for why I do this work in the first place. There are tough moments, without a doubt, but embracing those tough moments, reflecting on what we observe, and opening ourselves to transform for the better through that reflection allows us to grow and thrive. Instead of turning away from that opportunity for transformation, I want us to turn toward it, as it offers so much to us, both for us as individuals and for the communities in which we live. I’m confident that many of my students this week left with this view. Even if we don’t apply it perfectly in each interaction, we strive toward the ideal, working toward a better world one step at a time.
Until next time,
Matt