First Presenter's Institution
Leading and Teaching for Growth
First Presenter's Brief Biography
A delayed vocation to education, Anthony has taught, led, and consulted in schools for more than 20 years following a brief career in journalism. He’s witnessed firsthand the power of a kind word at the right time, the positive response when dignity is offered, and the difference educators can make in the lives of children. He is buoyed by the hope an effective education holds for all our students, which in turn improves schools, districts, communities, countries and the world.
Document Type
Individual Presentation
Primary Strand
Social-Emotional Learning
Relevance to Primary Strand
Social-emotional learning like academic learning needs a climate and culture in place to ensure that learning takes place. Educators should take a skill-based approach to teaching in the social-emotional realm instead of relying on expectations that are only vaguely referenced without direct and intentional teaching. Too often educators bemoan how students fail to meet expectations as some sort of willful behavior instead of taking time to understand the skill deficit and then moving to bolster those skills.
Brief Program Description
Too often schools believe student misbehavior is tied to willful disrespect or disobedience and then move to quickly provide consequences that fail to improve behavior. Instead educators should treat SEL skill deficits like content and build pathways, programs and pedagogy to build improved SEL skills.
Summary
A Culture of Growth, that concentrates first on adult beliefs, mindsets, behaviors and narratives, provides a pathway to learning, whether it's academic attainment or improved social-emotional behaviors. In this way, teachers, school leaders and support staff won't see this presentation as one more thing, but instead will understand how minor adjustments in approach and practice will infuse their classrooms and schools with greater success. I will start with beliefs - what are educator beliefs, are they rooted in data or perception. What we believe is exposed in our mindsets, behaviors and narratives we share about our work. Next, we will explore mindsets - fixed, mixed and growth. We will share our own stories of failure and success, which corresponds to fixed mindedness when we give up and growth mindedness when we learn, even though it's hard. We will also explore the conditions for fixed mindedness starting with our own self-talk. Following mindsets, we will share the behaviors of the correspond to growth - planning, teaching, and assessing with special emphasis on feedback - something teachers provide every day. Participants will be provided with examples of growth-minded feedback, as well as moving away from judgmental that escalates misbehaviors to a culture of noticing. Finally we will revisit our stories from earlier in the presentation to discuss how and why we must allow room for our most challenging students to be given a voice and choice in how they learn.
Evidence
The number one teacher influence for accelerating learning in John Hattie's Visible Learning is "teacher estimation of student achievement." This ties directly to educator belief systems on who learns and who doesn't in a classroom.
Struggle and difficulty in all aspects in learning should be expected as defined by Dr. Carol Dweck's mindset research. Dr. Dweck's work draws a straight line to how students feel like they belong and can do the work to actually achieving academically.
Biographical Sketch
N/A
Learning Objective 1
A deeper understanding of growth mindset and how it pertains to social-emotional learning
Learning Objective 2
Internalizing the beliefs and experiences that led to participants to be successful or not in school as a learner and educator
Learning Objective 3
Operationalizing methodologies for SEL growth: improved feedback and framing for learning
Recommended Citation
Colannino, Anthony J., "Skill Not Will: A Mindset For Social-Emotional Growth for All" (2022). Southeast Conference on School Climate. 2.
https://digitalcommons.georgiasouthern.edu/secsc/2022/2022/2
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
Skill Not Will: A Mindset For Social-Emotional Growth for All
A Culture of Growth, that concentrates first on adult beliefs, mindsets, behaviors and narratives, provides a pathway to learning, whether it's academic attainment or improved social-emotional behaviors. In this way, teachers, school leaders and support staff won't see this presentation as one more thing, but instead will understand how minor adjustments in approach and practice will infuse their classrooms and schools with greater success. I will start with beliefs - what are educator beliefs, are they rooted in data or perception. What we believe is exposed in our mindsets, behaviors and narratives we share about our work. Next, we will explore mindsets - fixed, mixed and growth. We will share our own stories of failure and success, which corresponds to fixed mindedness when we give up and growth mindedness when we learn, even though it's hard. We will also explore the conditions for fixed mindedness starting with our own self-talk. Following mindsets, we will share the behaviors of the correspond to growth - planning, teaching, and assessing with special emphasis on feedback - something teachers provide every day. Participants will be provided with examples of growth-minded feedback, as well as moving away from judgmental that escalates misbehaviors to a culture of noticing. Finally we will revisit our stories from earlier in the presentation to discuss how and why we must allow room for our most challenging students to be given a voice and choice in how they learn.
