Key Takeaways from the MindShifting class this week

Every time I step into one of our MindShifting classes with my co-instructors, Tammie Schrader and Jane Lyons, I feel that particular kind of gratitude you only get from doing work that matters. These sessions aren’t lectures; they’re living rooms—spaces where educators show up honest, curious, and willing to experiment alongside us.

This week we taught session 5 of the Resilient Mindsets for Long-Term Success course and I felt compelled to share some of what transpired.

We explored two ideas that sound simple on paper but become transformative when they land in the body:

1. Failure is fuel
   
2. Flexible thinking creates possibility
   

When Failure Becomes the Teacher

We spent time with the idea often called anti-fragility—growing stronger because of stress rather than in spite of it. If you’ve ever watched a student realize they can handle a stumble without losing face, you’ve seen anti-fragility flicker into life.

One particular story shared during the session had the group smiling. One of the educators taking the class shared a story of a student who had managed to get their sweatshirt stuck in a basketball hoop. 

Instead of rushing in with a rescue, the teacher saw an opportunity to reframe the situation as a natural consequence and gave the student space to think through it. 

Embarrassment softened into curiosity; problem-solving replaced panic. The sweatshirt came down eventually. The win was the student’s shift from “I had bad luck so fix this for me” to “I was careless, which is why my sweatshirt is stuck. I can live with the consequences. I can’t expect someone to come in and rescue me from my own carelessness, and eventually the sweatshirt will fall down.”

That’s the heart of resilience. Not just surviving unexpected outcomes, but benefiting from them.

We talked about building low-stakes struggle into everyday activities: exploratory projects where the first attempt is expected to be imperfect, draft-feedback-revise loops that craft better writing,  routines for tracking progress so improvement becomes visible and celebrated. None of this means leaving students alone with frustration. It means coaching with questions, making reflection a habit, and protecting students’ dignity while letting them do the work only they can do.

Many Ways Forward

We also looked at mental models. These are the internal maps we use to make sense of problems and people. Rigid maps trap us; flexible ones open doors. The moment we hear ourselves say, “Well, this is how we’ve always done it,” is often the moment growth is asking to come in.

One educator in the session described math lessons where multiple solution paths are not only allowed but encouraged. Some kids might sketch number lines, others decompose numbers, others build visual models. 

The room transforms when students see that “smart” doesn’t mean “one correct method.” They start debating ideas instead of defending egos. It’s subtle, but it changes the social physics of the classroom: learners stop performing certainty and start exploring possibility.

Flexible thinking doesn’t require abandoning standards. It asks us to expand the repertoire of how we get there. That can look like borrowing a tool from another discipline, trying a deliberately “opposite” approach just to see what it reveals, or inviting a colleague with a different background to pressure-test an assumption. 

What Moved Me Most

Near the end, a participant said something I can’t stop thinking about: “This isn’t just about teaching. This is about helping students build a life.” Exactly! 

These ideas – embracing missteps, entertaining multiple paths – aren’t just classroom tricks. They’re identity work.

• Who am I when something goes wrong?
  
• Do I believe there are other ways forward than the one I first imagined?
  
• Can I trust myself in the uncertainty between attempt and understanding?
  

Participants talked about what happens when students see their teachers practicing resilience and flexibility in real time, with their own trials and mistakes; how the students themselves learn to mirror those same mindsets.

Why I love doing this work together

I’m proud of these courses, and I’m deeply proud to teach them with Tammie and Jane. They bring classroom experience, warmth, steadiness, and a shared belief in human possibility. Our participants bring their professional experience and drive to help kids grow. 

While the official write up of Session 5 was “about” anti-fragility and flexible mental models, what the students (and the teachers) found out was that it was really about possibility: every failure as a doorway, every mental model as a key. 

And when the class ended, the three of us looked at each other, and Jane expressed what we were all thinking, “We are doing a really good thing here.”

Next session is my favorite one; this is where the participants present to each other how they will teach resilient and flexible mindsets to their students. I can’t wait.