The Creative Classroom: An Event Featuring Carol Dweck and Michael Light

The Creative Classroom: An Event Featuring Carol Dweck and Michael Light

Thursday, January 15th, 6-7:30pm at the Contemporary Jewish Museum
Click here for tickets and more information

We're delighted to partner with the Contemporary Jewish Museum for an event next Thursday, January 15th, featuring Carol Dweck and Michael Light. As many know, Carol Dweck's work on mindsets has reverberated throughout the education and business worlds. Her best-selling 2007 book, Mindset, explained her research on the fundamental distinctions between growth and fixed mindsets. In essence, individuals with a growth mindset see their brain as a muscle, and respond to failure by increasing their effort and training; those with a fixed mindset believe they either have it or not, and if they fail, conclude that they don't have what it takes and stop trying. 

These conclusions may sound simple, but Dweck's research has profound implications. In areas like math, for example, many students who struggle quickly conclude that "I'm just not good at math," believing that there is a fixed ability that they simply don't have. Dweck's research makes clear that in situations like that, while direct academic support is important, addressing the underlying mindset is at least equally important: students must believe that they can change their level of ability through effort. Luckily, her research shows that mindsets are teachable, and relatively simple interventions can help students develop a growth mindset across many areas of their lives.

This research is a core part of our model at Millennium, one of several reasons we believe that equipping students with the right habits of mind is one of the greatest gifts a school can offer. By building our curriculum around these habits, Millennium establishes a foundation of core mindsets and beliefs first, upon which students can then build their academic knowledge in pursuit of an individual definition of success.