At PNA, we believe our students are capable of more than they know.  We have high expectations for students, and we strive to challenge them each and every day, providing scaffolding and support as we push them beyond their comfort zones.

The products that our students create are impressive, but the process tends to be even more impressive.  It is the process that stretches, helps eliminate old limits, and builds perseverance and grit, important character traits that cannot be otherwise taught.  The challenges that arise throughout the process provide the fun, engaging, and meaningful bits of learning and growing, the bits that build character, community, and a desire to overcome challenges and make a difference.  In other words, the challenges, and the way students learn to overcome them, set PNA students apart and provide them with the character skills that are necessary to be successful in, and enjoy, life.

Growth mindset is an especially tricky concept for kindergartners, but the ability to embrace and learn from challenges, mistakes, and “failures” is an important skill for even our youngest students to learn.  Challenges and mistakes are an inevitable part of life.  The way you face them makes all the difference.

By focusing on the learning process, we equip students to not only overcome challenges, but to embrace them as opportunities to grow.  It is uncomfortable at times, but it becomes more and more natural over time.  As students engage in facing and overcoming obstacles, they learn to take initiative and persevere.  They develop determination, learn to think flexibly, and become problem solvers.  In short, they develop a growth mindset, which allows them to see challenges and the mistakes that come with them as opportunities to grow instead of obstacles and failures.   ​

Going through life without making mistakes is impossible.  Embracing challenges and learning from mistakes as you try to overcome them is an invaluable skill for success in all areas of life.  Developing a growth mindset helps students to embrace and overcome challenges and to enjoy the process, obstacles and all.  This week, students engaged in “fire art” to make their auction project, a type of process art that uses glass, alcohol ink, and fire.  The first pane of glass students created together broke.  Although disappointed, students were able to learn from the mistake, apply less concentrated amounts of alcohol ink to the next attempt, and make it even more like their vision.

We created a class mission this week, which I believe captures this concept in a perfectly kid-friendly way.  In this classroom, we will try to learn and have fun and help others learn and have fun.  First grade is working on a project to create school guidelines, which has provided an authentic context in which to frame the necessary conversations about why we are in school and the choices we need to make because of that.  Trying to learn involves embracing challenges, taking risks, and collaborating with others and having fun helps us remember to enjoy the process, even when it is challenging.