GROWTH MINDSET

So, the new buzz in education is all about GROWTH MINDSET.  Which I totally love, because it really, if taught correctly, empowers kids to have persistence and use effort. If I had a quarter for every kid that I heard, "I can't do it", I'd be rich and I bet you can say the same thing.    The more confidence a kid has, often anxiety levels go down.  So really, this content it great taught in conjunction with anxiety prevention.  

So what's the GROWTH MINDSET all about?

Well Carol Dweck, the guru and sort of creator of GROWTH/FIXED MINDSET, says it really well.
"In a growth mindset, people believe that their most basic abilities can be developed through dedication and hard work - brains and talent are just the starting point.  This view creates a love of learning and a resilience that is essential for great accomplishment."

Researchers tell us that students who have this type of mindset-- those that believe they can become smarter and can do almost anything with effort and hard work -- may learn more, learn it more quickly and view mistakes and hard work as learning opportunities, rather than defeat.

I've also read that teaching the science behind it, behind how our brains work, is the key to getting buy-in and belief from kids.  The younger the better.  There are all kinds of great resources out there. One only has to google, "Growth Mindset" to get a heap of great resources.  Here are 2 of my favorite resources.

For a great introduction for children to Growth Mindset, try using the great lesson!

Teach your kids at an early age.  Start with this lesson.

Another great resource is the BRAINOLOGY program.  I super love anything that I can use with my kiddos on the computer.  AND SO DO THEY.  I mean the attention is so much better!  This program teaches the basic concepts of Growth Mindset and gives you lots of "hands-on" experiments to try. They call it a blended learning curriculum. There are animated characters: Chris, Dahlia, and Dr. Cerebrus, who teach students how the brain functions and learns, along with healthy habits, study techniques, self-regulation strategies, and other essential non-cognitive skills that help them to become effective learners. Then they deepen their knowledge and apply it to their own experience through classroom lessons, housed in the Brainology Implementation Guides for educators.  Check it out.  You'll love it!

Great program to teach your kids about Growth Mindset.  It is comprehensive and teaches healthy habits, study techniques, and self-regulation strategies.

PRACTING SKILLS FOR COMPREHENSION; Helpful and unhelpful thoughts

As the anxiety group proceeds, we continue to practice identifying which are helpful and which are unhelpful thoughts.  I have a series of lessons I use for different age groups, available on my Teachers

Pay Teachers site.

We did lots of practicing on choosing which was helpful vs unhelpful.

As they got more proficient in choosing between the two, we decided to provide students with prompts of actual student worries (based on our surveys we took at the beginning of the group) and have them attempt to give us HELPFUL THOUGHTS.

Example of complete prompt - situation and thought

Even our earliest learners could remember, "It's ok", the most basic helpful thought.

Example of a partial prompt with just the situation.  If students had a difficult time remember, I would use errorless learning and give a partial answer such as, "IT'S....", sometimes doing the "ok sign" with my fingers. Repetition, repetition!

Every session, as I mentioned earlier, we would practice our COOL BREATHING and relaxation techniques.  Often I let a different kid choose from a choice board which technique they'd like to practice, usually trying to add a new one every week (maybe same technique but different way of doing it).  One that was a hit was using the app by Sesame Street called, "Breathe, Think, Do".  Remember, I used this for kindergarteners and 1st graders.  I did have one kid who said Sesame Street was for babies, so we just let him sit out (pick and choose your battles, otherwise he was very disruptive).

Super cute and  educational breathing, relaxing and thinking app for kids

Practice breathing with the monster.  Another fun twist on belly breathing for your kids!

Teaches kids to stop and think.  They get to touch the bubbles on the screen to "pop" them, and then come up with 3 plans for the problem situation given.

There are more and more good tools available to teach relaxation.  For me, the key was mixing it up, making it fun, using technology sometimes and allowing students to choose.  I even had one student, a first grader, who wanted to make up his own prompts for progressive relaxation (he was the one who said Sesame Street was for babies).  We allowed him to do this, he lead the group, and we had such good attention and buy-in from the other kiddos!  In our next blog, we'll talk a little more about some of the more advanced techniques we used in our anxiety prevention groups with our 3rd- 7th graders.  Write to me if you have comments, questions or suggestions.  What great things have you found out there???

LET'S DO THIS! SOCIAL TWEEKING GETS STARTED

Welcome to Social Tweeking!  I am super excited to start this blog to share and receive feedback for those of us who work with children on social emotional/social skills.  I have worked with kids for over a decade now in a variety of capacities.  I have gone from mentor to therapist to supervisor.  My experiences have included stints in mental hospitals, public health clinics, Department of Child and Family Services, alternative school, public school, and a special education cooperative.  I have done group, individual and family therapy.  I have run groups from preK to high school, along with parent groups to boot.  I have loved all my experiences and feel that all have given me insight in some form or another.

My latest passion has been working with children on the autism spectrum, more specifically, kids with aspergers.  This has been both a challenge and a great reward.  Being able to connect, relate to and get buy-in from this group can be frustrating.  But alias, it can be done and when you achieve a success, boy does it feel good.  I started working with this group of kids as a LCSW in a special education cooperative and quickly found this was "my niche".  We work with those students who have a difficult time remaining in their home schools due to behavior.  These awesome students usually came to us with large deficits in social emotional skills.  Most had multiple diagnosis, such as OCD and ADD.  Almost all had clinically significant but undiagnosed anxiety.  We do almost daily social groups but found this was not enough.  We needed more intensive instruction in anxiety prevention and also cognitive behavioral therapy.  With this as my task, I set out to try to find everything I could to assist in instruction.  What I came to find was there was not much out there.  There is Social Thinking, by Michelle Garcia Winner, that is absolutely fabulous, but often times "too high" or "too wordy" for my students, who on top of their ASD, had severe anxiety and depression.  There are some great CBT programs, but not many with evidence in using with kids with ASD. Hence, I set out to create my own stuff, modifying sometimes other curriculum, but also individualizing for my students.  And that's where I am now.  I continue to create and search for the latest and greatest in resources for my kiddos.  I have been dappling in Mindfulness and also Growth Mindset, but am still struggling a bit here.  Please join me in my blog to hear my successes and failures.  Share with me yours as well!  After, it takes a village!